“Employees at two of the technology industry’s younger giants, Google and Yahoo, overwhelmingly support a presidential candidate who has positioned himself as the leader of a new political wave,” Todd Bishop reports for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Elder statesmen Apple and Microsoft? Not as much.”
“Employees of all four companies have contributed more to Sen. Barack Obama than to any other candidate,” Bishop reports.
“That’s one pattern evident in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer analysis of Federal Elections Commission data. The analysis looked at personal contributions by workers and executives at 15 major technology companies,” Bishop reports.
“Among other things, the numbers indicate strong Democratic leanings among technology workers. More than 73 percent of the money contributed by workers at the 15 companies has gone to Democratic candidates. That’s well above the roughly 60 percent going to Democrats from the general population,” Bishop reports.
“One anomaly is the tech industry’s support for Republican Ron Paul. Among employees of the 15 companies in the sample, he ranked third in donations, ahead of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee,” Bishop reports.
“A potential clash of corporate cultures is a major question in Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid to acquire Sunnyvale’s Yahoo. And based on the election data, at least, there’s a notable difference between employees at the two companies,” Bishop reports. “Yahoo employees made personal contributions to Obama totaling more than $66,500 through Feb. 29 – three times as much as they gave to the Clinton campaign… Microsoft employees have given about $193,000 to Obama’s campaign, and about $178,000 to Clinton’s campaign.”
Bishop reports, “Apple is sort of in the middle. The Cupertino company’s employees have given $40,700 to Obama and $28,700 to Clinton.”
More in the full article here.
