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Among Bernie Sanders' top donor there are a lot of big tech companies (most of them based on Silicon Valley, California), namely: Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Facebook. This surprises me because Sanders tax policies would damage big companies' revenue.

Those donations are pretty modest (~ $10K) -- five orders of magnitude lower than Hilary Clinton's top donations (~ $1B). Is the small size of the donations the only reason why Sanders' top donators are big tech companies?

Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contrib.php?cycle=2016&id=N00000528&type=f

drake
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    Are the donations by the companies, or by employees of the companies? – Golden Cuy Feb 11 '16 at 19:53
  • @AndrewGrimm By the companies, I suppose. Otherwise, names on the list would be employee names, rather than company names. – drake Feb 11 '16 at 19:57
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    Read at the bottom: "The money came from the organizations' PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals' immediate families. At the federal level, the organizations themselves did not donate, as they are prohibited by law from doing so." Companies cannot contribute directly to federal candidates. They can solicit contributions from their employees and direct them as they see fit. – Zach Lipton Feb 12 '16 at 00:55
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    This is why, for instance, you see "US Air Force" on that list. The Air Force, as a government agency, certainly cannot support a presidential candidate. – Zach Lipton Feb 12 '16 at 00:57
  • Thanks, @ZachLipton. I hadn't read it and didn't know that. Do you know whether the donors were the employees or "owners" in the case of those tech companies? – drake Feb 12 '16 at 01:04
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    @drake If you click through on that site to the actual employer PACs, you can see a list of donors. Also, I think the only real answer you can get to this question is "because a number of the employees and owners of these companies and their families support Bernie Sanders." There's not much to this. – user2752467 Feb 12 '16 at 01:32
  • Thanks, @JustinLardinois . Only two companies are linked, unfortunately ... Uhm, I expect someone has a tentative idea for why such correlation between big tech companies and Sanders' donations. Perhaps, there is no reason and it's just that all donations are small and only companies with many employees are on the top ... – drake Feb 12 '16 at 01:50
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    We can only guess. And if I had to guess, my guess would be that tech companies skew young in terms of employee demographics...just as Bernie Sanders supporters do. –  Feb 12 '16 at 02:10
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    a politics.SE question that explains why it is illegal for corporations to donate to candidates. – user1873 Feb 12 '16 at 18:57
  • Whoa, these companies donate to the DNC? That's good. These companies are the real face of American innovation and ingenuity, not financial recklessness and corruption. – Paraney Feb 12 '16 at 22:04
  • @Paraney at the moment, a donation to the DNC isn't necessarily a donation towards Bernie Sanders, who has only been a democrat for about a year now. –  Feb 22 '16 at 04:29
  • @blip That's why I said they "donate to the DNC." Either way, Bernie Sanders shares some of the Democratic Party's deepest views. – Paraney Feb 23 '16 at 21:15

2 Answers2

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The donations you cite are made to the DNC, not to a Bernie SuperPac. He doesn't have one. They are for the purpose of obtaining special favors from the DNC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Congressional_Campaign_Committee

Part of Sanders' agenda is to break this cycle of indebtedness so his historic donations are from people, not corporations. People like Bill Maher, who donated a million to Obama's campaign would like to give Bernie more but Bernie is not accepting any but the support of the people.

Philipp
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Ruminator
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  • I though that companies or organizations could make small donations even if he lacked a SuperPac. Then, why can unions donate him? What kind of organizations can make donations? – drake Feb 11 '16 at 20:45
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    This answer is just wrong: This page shows contributions grouped by contributor to the candidate's campaign committee plus any super PACs or hybrid PACs working on his or her behalf. They're not contributions to the DNC, they're contributions to the candidate's campaign. Also, the second half is just opinion mixed with confusion. The individual contribution limit to campaigns directly is $2700 per election and has been for some time. Bill Maher gave a million to a PAC supporting Obama, not his campaign. – user2752467 Feb 12 '16 at 01:29
  • Sanders does not take money from super PACs. – Ruminator Feb 18 '16 at 23:17
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    What Opensecrets is reporting is donations to http://dccc.org/ and other generic Democrat groups which may or may not benefit Sanders and over which he has no control. – Ruminator Feb 18 '16 at 23:34
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Keep in mind... the fact that most of those tech companies are based in California has some relevance - California is (always has been) a progressive-leaning state. Combine that with the factor blip mentioned regarding the average age of people employed in said tech companies being rather young, and that young people are overwhelmingly throwing their support behind Bernie in this election cycle; Well, there you've got two factors lending quite a bit of weight as to why Bernie seems to be the favorite of many tech companies.

However, going by industry, tech companies do not make up the greater proportion of donations, see this page placing (interestingly enough) retired individuals as making up the largest amount of combined donations while Electronics Mfg. & Equip comes in at a modest 7th place in the list of most substantial donations by industry.

  • 1 Retired $1,086,825
  • 2 Education $580,328
  • 3 Lawyers/Law Firms $300,057
  • 4 Health Professionals $296,931
  • 5 Misc Business $286,682
  • 6 Democratic/Liberal $275,490
  • 7 Electronics Mfg & Equip $268,74

`

Sk Johnson
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  • I wonder what percentage of those retired people were public employees? – user1873 Feb 21 '16 at 16:23
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    What would be the relevance of that (just wondering)? Current Civil Servants/Public Officials place 11th in that list with roughly 170.6 million in donations, if that's any help to what you're lookig at... I just found it interesting that retirees (a.k.a. elderly people, in most cases) make up the largest portion of donations yet all I hear anyone talking about is how Bernie's base is heavily represented by young and first-time voters. – Sk Johnson Feb 21 '16 at 16:35
  • @SkJohnson though note a lot of people that may be supporting candidates heavily that are in tech may also call themselves 'retired' and not even be 40. :) –  Feb 22 '16 at 04:31
  • Well, yeah, I'm sure some are, I just wouldn't think it could be a very large portion of them... but I don't really know. I don't see why there would be more retired people under the retirement age in the tech industry than there usually are in other industries; But again, just making the assumption that the majority of retirees are going to be elderly people. – Sk Johnson Mar 12 '16 at 09:04