WASHINGTON--When Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman announced last week that she wouldn't vote for her party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, she pledged to raise money for the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and to urge like-minded Republicans to follow suit.
She won't have to talk her fellow tech industry conservatives into spurning Trump: They already have. His campaign has pulled in less than 6 percent of what Republican nominee Mitt Romney had raised from tech donors by this point in the 2012 race.
But raising money for Clinton may prove difficult. While the Democrat has raised 25 times more than Trump from tech donors so far, she has drawn less than half of what President Barack Obama had raised from tech employees by this point four years ago, and less than Bernie Sanders, her opponent in the Democratic primary, collected before he left the race.
Tech industry employees - long a reliable source of presidential donations, especially for Democrats - have refused to open their wallets for Trump, and they've been stingier than usual with Clinton, too, according to an analysis performed for Reuters by Crowdpac, a nonpartisan political crowdfunding startup that analyzes campaign contribution data.
Trump and Clinton together reported having received $3.5 million from tech workers as of June 30, compared with $11 million donated to President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney through June 2012, according to the Crowdpac analysis. In 2008, more than $8.3 million in tech donations had gone to Obama and McCain by June 30.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this story. The Clinton campaign asked for the methodology of the Crowdpac analysis but did not comment on its findings.
To quantify the tech industry's political giving, Crowdpac tallied contributions of more than $200 - the Federal Election Commission's reporting threshold - from donors who listed technology companies as their employers, as well as individuals who work in related roles, such as software engineers and venture capitalists. Contributions to campaigns, Super PACs and joint fundraising committees were included.
The analysis may have missed people who work at small technology companies not yet recognized by Crowdpac, as well as individuals who have given less than $200.
Technology firms lobby the government on a range of issues, from privacy and encryption to immigration and trade, and they have a strong interest in who sits in the Oval Office. But this year, campaign finance records and interviews with more than two dozen people in the industry suggest that many would-be donors in Silicon Valley remain unwashed by either candidate.
Matt McIlwain, managing director of Madrona Venture Group, gave money to Romney in 2011 and to Republican Marco Rubio in year's presidential primary election. But he won't support either Trump or Clinton in the general election.
"Candidates need to have that embrace of innovation and articulate how it is a road for anybody in our society," he said. "I'm not inspired by either of the major party candidates."
Democrats consistently draw more tech money than Republicans, but the giving is unusually lopsided this year. Trump has raised a mere $128,000 from 238 tech donors so far. Clinton, by contrast, has raised $3.4 million from 2,976 individuals in the industry, according to Crowdpac's analysis.
At this point in 2012, Romney had raised $2.3 million and Obama had raised $8.8 million.
Silicon Valley Republicans say Trump's paltry donation totals are no surprise given his public statements attacking the tech industry. Earlier this year, Trump called for a boycott of Apple products after the company stopped cooperating with federal law enforcement efforts to break into the password-protected iPhone of one attacker in the mass shooting in San Bernardino. Trump also accused Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos of orchestrating an online retail monopoly.
Trump's positions on limiting immigration and free trade run counter to some of the industry's most basic interests.
For Clinton, having a long track record in politics is a liability with some donors in an industry that reveres innovation. "She's an incremental technocrat, and for people who are used to taking on the world, that is not very inspiring," said Gregory Ferenstein, author of "The Age of Optimists," a book about politics and Silicon Valley.
