This Chart Perfectly Captures What Happened to Silicon Valley’s Politics

With CEOs and Silicon Valley getting more tangled up in our politics, new research shows how corporations’ politics have changed over the years. (Financial Times)

The visual: The below chart (which is based on campaign donation data) illustrates how tech leaders have shifted from being predominantly right-leaning centrists to now being sharply divided between progressive and conservative camps.

What about the rest of corporate America? A new study by Columbia Law School political scientist Riley Steel found that (Silicon Valley aside) corporate big wigs have shifted to the left, with the median CEO going from solidly right-leaning to moderate and senior managers becoming mostly left-wing.

Context: Business and politics are increasingly mixing, whether it’s billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban duking it out over Trump vs. Kamala, or the culture war bickering that’s resulted from trends like ESG and corporate DEI.

Bubba’s Two Cents

The shift in execs’ politics pretty much matches what we’re seeing across the board in society - people who back the status quo and institutions (Cuban) are facing off against those who are critical of those institutions (Musk) and want to break stuff and switch things up.