Apple and Microsoft Workers: Not That Different Politically

Microsoft and Apple. Diametrically opposed forces, right? Each camp has haters and believers. You know, come to think of it, it's not all that different from the presidential campaign; for many people, if you're not on their side, then clearly you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Interestingly enough though, when it comes to individual campaigns donations, they aren't all that far apart. (And, there's an even bigger surprise) According to data gathered from fundrace, opensecrets.org, and the fec, roughly 68% of individual campaign contributions from Microsoft employees went to Democratic candidates, with 32% going to Republican candidates. Over at Apple, 83% went to Democrats, and 17% to Republicans. Depending on where you stand, those may or may not be surprising numbers.

Here's the interesting fact though: Both Microsoft and Apple make the list of the top 20 corporations with the highest number of individual contributions to... Ron Paul.

Microsoft comes in at #5, just below google, and Apple is at #19, just above Intel. Besides Microsoft, Apple, and Google, the list is essentially a who's who of defense contractors, and government/military agencies.

Now the disclaimers: bear in mind these are self-identified employees of these companies. As a result, compiling data on Apple in particular, is difficult because some people list the employer as Apple, others as Apple, Inc., Apple Computer, etc. Exploring these numbers creates a rabbit hole from which you could literally spend a month. Getting an exact count is tricky, as are the options in parsing the data: total amount of money vs. total # of contributors, etc split by candidate, pre- convention/post-convention. We will leave that to the more savvy number runners among us.

Still, its interesting to see that despite how different their philosophies are in design and programming, most politically active employees at both companies could sit down and talk about politics in agreement.