Does it really matter? An important reason to buy an EV (particularly if they're more expensive than gasoline cars, which is sometimes but not always true) is to combat climate change. Belief and concern about climate change are strongly politically correlated in the US, and he's very specifically unaligning himself from the political group that cares.

Does this explain the entire 5× difference? Probably not. But:

> Are republicans truly not buying as many electric cars?

Very, very probably yes.