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he listened to his followers
Any of these polls, he could presumably just pop over to the desk of the dev with access to fiddle with databases or something and get the result he needs.
I've read that he may have been meeting people at the WC Final and given his orders then. Not sure, as that's the kind of event that his type of people go to, but it's an appealing idea that he was told to get in line there.
Tesla investors have been pressing him to either step down at Twitter or at Tesla. This is probably just performance to make it look like he listened to his followers rather than was forced to act by the board.