The Impact of Citizens United on Large Corporations and Their Employees

Abstract

The goal of this research is to determine whether the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling changed the contribution strategies of employees of major corporations. Using an original dataset of campaign contributions by employees of Fortune 500 companies, we analyze the contribution strategies of these individuals in the 2008 and 2012 presidential election cycles. Overall, our results suggest three important conclusions. First, Citizens United did not alter Fortune 500 employees’ contribution patterns to traditional political committees. However, the emergence of Super political action committees (PAC) in 2012 may have pulled employees’ contributions from 527 groups, at least in the short term. Second, we find large differences in contributions across resources, and the differences become even more dramatic after Citizens United when CEOs contributed millions to Super PACs. Finally, Fortune 500 employee contributions to traditional political committees still outweigh Super PAC contributions in both numbers and amount. And, importantly, employees of the world’s largest corporations were not the driving force behind the increase in spending after Citizens United.