This morning I saw in comments an assertion about corporate political contributions that I recognized not to be true so I thought I’d comment on it. The site Open Secrets posts statistics about political contributions. Based on their figures for the most recent cycle, here’s how political contributions stack up so far:
| Democrats | $68,797,444 |
| Republicans | $66,525,793 |
Counterintuitive, no? I suppose you could further subdivide that between large for profit corporations on the one hand and not for profits, unions, etc. on the other hand but contributions by for profit corporations still don’t go lopsidedly to Republicans. Large corporations tend to hedge their bets, contributing to both political parties. To which company they contribute more tends to depend more on who the incumbents are in the states in which they have operations.
Similarly, large individual contributions tend to be split between the two major political parties.
So, following the lead of the large fact checking sites, I would characterize the claim that large organizations give overwhelmingly to Republicans as false and the characterization that large for profit companies give overwhelmingly to Republicans as mostly false.
The lesson here is phrase your claims about political contributions very carefully. If you phrase it narrowly enough, you can prove practically anything you care to.
“If you phrase it narrowly enough, you can prove practically anything you care to.â€
A useful reminder. And on any topic, anytime, anywhere.
I am not really that interested in one cycle, I am more interested in the long term. In any given vote the wealthy may decide to support one candidate over another for a number of reasons. What do the wealthy do over the long term? Gelman covered that. Besides, we dont know the non-public donations, like that cushy board job.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/red_state_blue_state_revised.pdf
Maybe that is changing but it will need to be documented over time.
Steve
So what you need to do is go back to the previous cycle or the cycle previous to that and do the same tallying. There will be no change in the pattern. Large rich corporations contribute to Democrats, too. Both political parties are corrupt. Your story about all of the rich corporations (or rich individuals) backing Republicans but none of them supporting Democrats is a fantasy.
Just look at Rahm Emanuel. When he left the Clinton Administration, his first step was taking his Rolodex and hunting for a sinecure that would pay big in the financial sector. He got one.
And here I thought that Emanuel was secretly a bond guru, what with Solomon being all fixed income and such. I remember a speech he gave describing trends in the provisions of warrants attached to corporate bonds. Well, OK, actually I don’t. I’m shattered.
Did I really say “all”? I hope not. I do know that I said the finance sector owns the GOP and rents the Dems. What I think I said, or should have said (unless I was rushing) is that most of the wealthy have for a long time tended to support the GOP. Gelman’s studies have been the best I have seen on the topic.
“When he left the Clinton Administration, his first step was taking his Rolodex and hunting for a sinecure that would pay big in the financial sector. He got one.”
The point I made when I said that Open Secrets just scratches the surface. You need to look beyond these kinds of donations. Would b nice if we had access to the 501 numbers.
Steve
To prove your point you would need to demonstrate a significant tilt towards Republicans. There isn’t one.
As to what happens secretly, that’s a religious matter, not subject to empirical validation.