Open Secrets has a list of Top Contributors to Federal Campaigns in the 2008 Election Cycle. If you drill down in the the Computers/Internet category, you will notice that the contributions seem to be favoring the Democrats, who have received 60% of the sectors contributions in this cycle. Looking back at 2006, it was 51% Democrats and 49% Republicans
Other stats of note:
- Total Contributions in 2006 Elections: $18.4M
- Total Contributions so far in 2008 Elections: $13M
- Top Contributor in 2008: Microsoft $900K
- Top Contributor in 2006: Microsoft $2.03 Million
- Microsoft’s Total Federal Contributions in 2006 ($2M) are about the same as the combined contributions of Dell, Intel, HP, IBM, Google, Yahoo, and Oracle. ($2,4M)
- Google has contributed more so far in 2008 ($389,712) than it did in the entire 2006 cycle ($288,987)
- Of the Top 20 Tech companies contributing to Federal Campaigns in 2008. Only 5 of them have favored the Republican Party in their contributions EMC (77%), Dell (61%), Compuware (72%), Perot Systems (90%), Intel (57%).
With the election cycle just getting started, I’m curious if these numbers mean we will see a much larger contributions from the technology sector in the 2008 election year.
I’m including some of the 2008/2006 data from Open Secrets bellow. Expect to see some more posts from me over the next few weeks, as John Mark and I do research for bytesfree.org as well as our upcoming presentationĂ‚Â at LUG Radio Live USA 2008.
2008 Contributions to Date:
2006 Contributions to Date: