Tech workers' political donations overwhelmingly skew Democratic: report

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https://thehill.com/policy/technology/413428-tech-workers-political-donations-skew-overwhelmingly-democratic-report

Tech workers' political donations overwhelmingly skew Democratic: report
By John Bowden - 10/26/18 05:56 PM EDT


Partisan donations this political cycle from workers at technology giants skew overwhelmingly Democratic, according a report released Friday, though the majority of the workers' donations go to nonpartisan organizations.

A WIRED analysis of about 125,000 donations from employees of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft found that 23 percent of all donations made during the first nine months of 2018 went to Democratic candidates or Democratic groups, while just 1 percent went to Republicans. The remainder was split between nonpartisan political groups at 67 percent and company PACs with 9 percent.

ActBlue, a fundraising platform that crowdsources small-dollar donations for progressive Democratic candidates, was the highest recipient of tech workers' donations during 2018 — other than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's $10 million donation to the With Honor PAC, a nonpartisan group that works to elect veterans to public office.

The Democratic National Committee, as well as the party's House and Senate campaign arms, were also top recipients of donations, while New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D) was the most-donated-to politician on the list.

Other top Democrats on the list include Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, whose campaign for Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz (R) has gained national attention in recent months.

The fundraising disparity among workers is in sharp contrast to the spending of top tech companies' political action committees, which WIRED notes in the analysis was more evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

The analysis largely follows a trend previously reported during the 2016 election, when more than 80 percent of direct candidate or group donations from tech workers were reported to have gone to Democratic-aligned causes.

Conservatives have battled tech companies including Twitter and Facebook for months over claims that workers at the companies deliberately censor conservative views through "shadow-banning," a practice the companies have denied using.