Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s reported decision to donate $1.25 million to Donald Trump’s campaign and a super PAC supporting it generated many headlines over the weekend. But despite the seven-figure lifeline to Trump from Thiel—who spoke at the Republican convention that nominated Trump—Hillary Clinton is still far ahead when it comes to technology industry donors.
According to Crowdpac, a political information site that tracks donations and scores candidates on a 1-10, liberal-to-conservative scale, Hillary Clinton (6.9L) has so far received $7.7 million from the technology industry, while Donald Trump (8.1C) has received $299,000.
While not exactly comparable to Crowdpac’s numbers, the figures from the Center for Responsive Politics are even more striking. According to its website, OpenSecrets.org, Clinton has received $39,471,940 from the Communications/Electronics sector, while Trump pulled in only $784,363. Overall in that sector, Democrats received 71.4% of donations and Republicans got 21.4%.
Broken down more granularly, the Internet industry gave some $2,392,158 to Clinton and $31,738 to Trump, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The two candidates show similarly lopsided totals in the electronics, manufacturing, and equipment and TV, movies, and music industries.
These totals would not include the Thiel donations.
The tech world’s preference for Democrats over Republicans has been clear for some time, but its willingness to make political donations has become much more apparent in this election cycle. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz made waves in September when he committed to donating $20 million to Hillary Clinton and other Democratic groups in a bid to defeat Donald Trump and other Republicans in November. And on October 8, he announced that he was donating up to $15 million more to political advocacy and get-out-the-vote groups.
https://twitter.com/moskov/status/784894970721435654
Similarly, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said that he would give up to $5 million to non-profit groups that help veterans if Donald Trump releases his tax returns by Wednesday—Oct. 19—the date of the final presidential debate.
The Democratic leaning shows up farther down the tech world organizational chart as well. Google (GOOGL) employees have given over $335,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the past three months, the most from any single employer, Recode reports, citing Federal Election Commission data. Apple (AAPL), IBM (IBM), and Microsoft (MSFT) workers were also sizable donors to the Clinton campaign, Recode notes.
