Political action committees, or PACs, rake in a lot of money from companies and individuals. In just the first 12 months of the 2024 election cycle, PACs have raised $3.7 billion.
Companies and individuals seeking to support particular political parties or candidates often send their money to PACs, which pool campaign contributions to support or oppose political candidates, parties, or legislative agendas.
In this infographic, Visual Capitalist's Kayla Zhu shows the top 10 publicly-traded companies by U.S. campaign contributions to company-associated political action committees (PACs) in 2024. The data was collected by Quiver Quantitative and is current as of August 8, 2024.
Republicans Receive More Donations Than Democrats
While the split between donations to Democrat versus Republican PACs was mostly even among the top 10, Republicans received a larger share from almost every set of company PACs.
The only company which had a larger share of Democrat donations was diversified technology and manufacturing company, Honeywell, which also had the highest total of donations to PACs at $3.5 million.
Shipping company UPS had 67% of its contributions to Republican PACs associated with the company, the highest percentage of donations to a particular party.
On the other end, besides Honeywell, Verizon had the next-highest share of donations to Democrat company-associated PACs at 48%.
Defense Companies Among Top Donors
Defense companies were well-represented among the top 10 biggest contributors, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris Technologies, and Lockheed Martin. These companies provide goods or services to military agencies, with the U.S. Department of Defense being a major client.
Another prominent industry among the top campaign contributors are telecommunications and media companies, including Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon Communications.
Both the defense and telecommunications industries are heavily regulated by the U.S. federal government, and often rely on government contracts.
