What are the political views of federal employees?
Many, perhaps most, federal employees do not donate money to political campaigns. The general view of government employees is that they prefer Democrats over Republicans as they benefit economically by having more money allocated for government spending. The more money there is to spend, the more money there is for salaries and benefits and those responsible for allocating or overseeing the spending grow in importance in society.
Is that true? Do government employees, or federal employees in particular, prefer Democrats over Republicans?
We do not know how people vote in elections. But, as far as political contributions go, there are statistics available. The Department of State has been the most politically active in 2015 and 2016 with most of the money going to Democrats. The Department of the Treasury, which includes the Internal Revenue Service, comes in second.
Other agencies also contribute the vast majority of their money to Democrats.
Here is how federal employees have chosen to spend money in political campaigns in 2015-2016:
Agency | Democrats | Republicans |
---|---|---|
Department of State | $299,224 | $24,241 |
U.S. Postal Service | $162,645 | $112,840 |
Department of the Treasury | $170,897 | $1925 |
Department of Justice | $137,603 | $14,939 |
Department of Veterans Affairs | $118,834 | $36,738 |
Department of Health & Human Services | $139,483 | $12,319 |
Department of Energy | $120,271 | $14,377 |
The Center for Responsive Politics provides the data which are collected by the Federal Election Commission. The data were released by the FEC on April 16, 2016. There were not other individual federal agencies listed. Presumably, these are the agencies with the largest number of political contributions from federal employees.