“…as corporate political expenditures have grown in scale and complexity, so too have concerns regarding their ethical implications, transparency, legality, corruption, and potential for undue influence over democratic institutions.”
Corporate donations to political campaigns are at an all-time high, with billions of dollars flowing into individual candidates’ campaigns and third-party entities, making it exceedingly difficult to follow the money.
Companies and their leadership are at a crossroads: how to constructively engage in the political process and manage political spending. Confronted with challenges and risks never faced before, their previous political spending and engagement strategies, designed for a period of predictability under stable democratic institutions, no longer advance or protect corporate interests.
Support by the largest institutional investors for the Center for Political Accountability’s corporate political disclosure resolution increased to 63.0 percent in the 2025 proxy season, up from 2024’s 60.8 percent support from this group of investors, according to analysis based on shareholder voting data from Diligent Market Intelligence.
The report is divided into three parts: risk to the bottom line; risks from political pressure and retribution; and risks to corporate culture and a stable business environment. It concludes with policies companies can put in place and actions they can take to protect themselves narrowly and broadly.
This report from the Center for Political Accountability sheds light on electoral spending by public companies heavily involved in the emerging cryptocurrency fields. The report traces tens of millions of dollars in targeted political spending and links that spending to concrete risks, caused by this spending, that affect already embattled companies.
The 2024 trilogy of reports by the Center for Political Accountability— Corporate Underwriters and the Democracy Gap, Courting Risk: Corporate Underwriters & State Attorneys General, and Corporate Underwriters: Where the Rubber Hits the Road executive summary.
Support by the largest institutional investors for the Center for Political Accountability’s corporate political disclosure resolution dropped to 63.7 percent in the 2024 proxy season, down from 2023’s 70.1 percent support from this group of investors, according to analysis based on shareholder voting data from Diligent Market Intelligence.
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