Silicon Valley spending ‘far more money’ to help Biden than on Clinton in 2016: report
Big Tech honchos are opening their wallets to help Trump lose
Silicon Valley honchos are opening their wallets and spending “far more money” on Democratic nominee Joe Biden than the tech industry spent supporting Hillary Clinton 2016, according to Vox.
“The tech industry did spend big to support Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Trump was merely a candidate then, without a track record of tangible policy changes on immigration, climate change, or other issues that concern the tech industry,” Vox reporters Theodore Schleifer and Rani Molla wrote.
“And Silicon Valley did not have the years of preparation to start new groups, raise big money, and mobilize its energy in the sophisticated ways that it has had in the runup to 2020,” Vox added. “And so this time around, Silicon Valley — led by this billionaire class and its captains of industry — has plunged even deeper into the world of partisan campaigning.”
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Vox cited “a Recode analysis of extensive campaign-finance data” to determine that Big Tech gurus are spending more this time around, although the specific difference is hard to calculate. Recode is owned by Vox Media.
“The exact amount depends on how you define Silicon Valley, but more money has been marshaled to back Joe Biden than was raised to back Clinton, no matter how you measure it,” Schleifer and Molla wrote.
Vox’s Recode spoke with a Silicon Valley executive who dumped millions of dollars with hopes to stop Trump from winning reelection.
“I would be very happy to go back to ignoring politics like I did before 2016,” the software executive told Recode. “I hope to put Twitter away after this election, and my political donations will go away along with that. That’s my hope.”
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Earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey struggled to name a single liberal person or entity that has been silenced by their platforms during a heated Senate hearing on Big Tech.
Back in July, Newsweek reported that employees at Amazon, Google-parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft had already donated $15 million to Democratic candidates, compared to only $3 million for Republicans.
Recode struggled to determine what exactly defines “Silicon Valley” these days so it analyzed the data three different ways: “Contributions by people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area zip codes,” “Contributions by people who describe themselves as a 'software engineer' or working in ‘venture capital’” and “Contributions by people who describe themselves as working for Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Apple, or Alphabet.”
All three models indicated overwhelming support for Democrats. It also indicated Trump and the GOP has received more 2020 financial support than in 2016, but his donations still fall millions of dollars behind the enormous piles of cash given to Biden and Democrats.
“People who live in the nine counties considered to be in the San Francisco Bay Area gave 22 percent more to Democrats in 2020 than they did in 2016, a jump from about $163 million to $199 million,” Vox reported.
“Gifts to the GOP from the Bay Area, where Republicans are few and far between, rose more dramatically, albeit from a far smaller base: After giving $800,000 to Republicans in 2016, Bay Area residents gave $22 million to boost Trump in 2020, a haul that came from figures like Oracle CEO Safra Catz,” the report continued.
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“If you look at tech by choosing two common job descriptions — venture capitalist and software engineer — you can also see the new energy on the left,” Schleifer and Molla wrote. “This group gave $7.2 million to Democrats in 2016. Four years later, that sum had almost tripled to $19 million. Republican donations from this slice of Silicon Valley also grew by about threefold but once again from a smaller base — from almost $700,000 to $2 million.
Democrats also dominate when it comes to employees of “iconic” Big Tech companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Netflix.
“Big Tech employees are giving far more in the Trump-Biden race than they did in the Trump-Clinton race. Donations to Democratic efforts jumped from about $8.5 million to about $14 million, growing by nearly 70 percent. Meanwhile, donations to back Trump from Big Tech employees almost quintupled — from just about $180,000 to $850,000. That’s despite Trump’s frequently blasting these donors’ employers,” Vox reported.