Employees donate more to their CEOs' preferred political candidates

Do you feel coerced by your CEO into making political choices on election day that you would not make otherwise? It's not uncommon for chief executive officers to affect how their employees vote.

Associate Professor of Finance Ilona Babenko and her research partners looked at eight federal election cycles from 1999 to 2014 and more than 2,000 companies. They found that “employees direct approximately three times more of their campaign contributions to political candidates supported by their firm’s CEO than to otherwise similar candidates.” An article in the Harvard Business Review on October 17, 2016:

"We also found that employees donate more to CEO-supported political candidates in all federal elections, including races for the House and Senate. In addition to contributions, we also looked at survey data on voter participation. We found that if a CEO makes campaign contributions to candidates in a certain congressional district (even if the CEO does not reside there), then the employees located in that district are 11.5% more likely to vote in federal elections, suggesting that CEOs can affect voter turnout and not just campaign contributions."

Hear Babenko discuss the findings: W. P. Carey Research: The Role of CEOs in Employee Voting from W. P. Carey School on Vimeo.

About Ilona Babenko