If money were votes (and some say it is), then it’d seem accounting professionals are favoring Democrats this election season.
A campaign finance database is reporting that big-money donors who identify themselves as CPAs, accountants or in “accounting” have contributed more than $1.4 million to Democratic candidates and only $842,000 to the GOP.
But you can also mine the data by employer. The employees at Big 4 firms, by that measure, are so far contributing to Democrats by a margin of two to one over Republicans. Here’s the data for Ernst & Young, for example.
The curious can also look for donors by zip code. (I checked: You won’t find my name. I guess I’m not a fat enough fat cat.)
All in all, this may be progress. And it’s kind of fun. But it’s also a little scary to think this data is so easily available these days.
That said, let’s look up some big names in the profession:
- Deloitte CEO James Quigley
- E&Y head Jim Turley
- KPMG’s Tim Flynn
- Intuit founder Scott Cook
- Microsoft founder Bill Gates
Of course, there are many places to find this stuff, including the Federal Election Commission, OpenSecrets.org and NewsMeat.
