More than 24 hours after the poll closed early Monday, Musk, 51, had yet to directly address the vote calling for him to "step down as head of Twitter," having earlier vowed to "abide by the results of this poll."

However, he replied to a number of tweets suggesting that the result had been unfairly swayed by bots, calling the theory "interesting."

Notorious internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom told Musk that it had been "unwise to run a poll like this when you are now deep state enemy #1."

"They have the biggest bot army on Twitter," he wrote.