Whom to vote for? Employees tend to follow their leader

Three business professors set out to examine “how the political preferences of C.E.O.s affect their employees’ campaign contributions and electoral choices.” The results of the study, which looked at eight federal election cycles from 1999 to 2014 and over 2,000 companies, showed a statistically significant correlation among campaign contributions made by the chief and his or her employees as well as voter turnout. The study found that “employees direct approximately three times more of their campaign contributions to political candidates supported by their firm’s C.E.O. than to otherwise similar candidates.”

If you’re thinking, “Well, C.E.O.s and employees donate along similar party lines because they share common values and interest,” think again.

The study uncovered patterns that show a chief executive’s influence is profound: “When a new C.E.O. contributes to different political candidates from the ones supported by the prior C.E.O., employees tend to follow his/her lead and redirect their donations as well,” wrote the professors, Ilona Babenko of Arizona State University, Viktar Fedaseyeu of Bocconi University in Italy and Song Zhang of the University of Lugano in Switzerland.