Tech Places Presidential Bets

The U.S. presidential election is roaring up. Industry contributions have become a standard feature of the ritual, so I thought it might be interesting to see how high tech invests -- oh, sorry -- donates. You might think that companies would be pretty cold-blooded about such things, wanting to keep on the good side of whoever takes residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. But some time at Maplight.org (a great site for seeing the connection between politics and money) showed that donations have largely been fairly one-sided, with some surprising strength by people who cannot win their parties' nominations.

Here's a breakout of donations by various industry sectors that together more or less make up the technology industry. All totals are as of July 31, 2008.

In almost every category, both Obama and Hillary Clinton far out-raised McCain. The only exception is telephone utilities, where McCain raised almost $410,000 to Obama's $298,065 and Clinton's $337,277. It will be interesting to see where things stand when the August numbers get added in, probably a few days from now.

However, if dollars beget consideration, the technology industry will be standing in a queue behind other parts of the business economy that give more. The next two tables (data from OpenSecrets.org, another great money and politics site) show industry donations for McCain and Obama as of July 31. The closest match to the collection of sectors above is the Computers/Internet category -- not a perfect match, but the numbers are reasonably close. For McCain, that group is 17th out of 20 business sectors and special interest groups.

Voting booth instruction image via Flickr user spcoon, CC 2.0.