Tech titan Elon Musk shocked Twitter followers by declaring he’d likely throw his support behind Florida‘s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis if he makes a bid for president in 2024.
When asked on Twitter early on Wednesday morning who he was “leaning towards” voting for in the next presidential election, Musk provided a concise response: “DeSantis.”
The remark came out of a longer Twitter conversation, where the Tesla founder revealed he voted for Republican Mayra Flores, who won the special election for Texas’s 34th Congressional District and flipped a seat that had been controlled by Democrats for four decades.
“I voted for Mayra Flores – first time I ever voted Republican,” the SpaceX founder tweeted, before predicting a “Massive red wave in 2022”.
Mr DeSantis has yet to indicate whether or not he’d make a run for the presidency in 2024, despite having favourable polling from Republican voters.
Last March, more than a quarter of Republican voters surveyed say they’d like to see the Florida governor join Donald Trump as his vice-president should the former president make a run in 2024.
Historically, Mr Musk has said that he’s “overwhelmingly” voted for Democrats, but recently he conceded that he’ll likely flip to the other side in the next election.
“Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now this election I will,” he said last month.
The tech billionaire clarified his point in a follow-up tweet, where he noted that in the previous election, he had thrown his support behind Democratic candidate Andrew Yang, but this time, he wanted to support a winning candidate.
“I supported Yang last time, but DeSantis has a better chance of winning,” he tweeted.
For his part, Mr DeSantis has continued to dodge questions about running on the GOP ticket in 2024.
As recently as this past Monday, Politico reported that when the outlet tried to get a firm response from the governor and asked if he would confirm whether he would forgo a run for president if former US president Donald Trump sought another term, he simply replied “nice try”.
