IT Field Political Bias & Incompetence
Demographic Analysis of the Tech Field
Data-driven analysis of political alignment in the technology sector
Key Statistics: 46 Occupations • 3,090,990 employees • 59% Average Democrat registration • 41% Average Republican registration
Inconvenient Truth
It's no secret that the majority of the IT field is politically aligned to the left.
While the numbers cited below indicate ~65% Democrat registration, other data based upon political donations among large tech companies estimate around 75% overall.
Political donation numbers for the Bay Area... over 95%!
Practically all large tech companies are based in Silicon Valley / Bay Area. This means that bigtechs in particular are essentially all made up of liberals, leftists, anarchists, and techno-authoritarians [saw a headline that used that one to categorize the political ideology of Silicon Valley]. These populations not only have particular social and political views and biases which are often quite far from being considered neutral or balanced, but these social groups also have a disproportionately higher prevalence of Cluster B personality disorders according to several related studies.
In many cases the socio-political views and mental health status of IT personnel may have no significant effect on the software they create. However, AI is a notable exception where those biases and personality traits have a very profound impact on the end product. As such, EVERY major/popular AI model in use has a politically left bias. They also tend to exhibit narcissistic (Cluster B) type behaviors. Whether these particular traits are actually inherited from the devs involved or merely a side-effect of the reward system used in the typical LLM training process is another matter. In any case, the only solution for a neutral, secure AI system is to have your own. Meaning either use a fine-tuned open model or your own custom trained from scratch LLM running on your own network.
Systemic Incompetence
Long ago the IT industry started pigeon-holing talent/skills, along with offshoring/outsourcing, commoditizing, etc. Churning out products, keeping up with trends, and increasing profit margins became more important than quality. Often a popular software product or "cloud" service/platform is really just the proverbial polished turd.
Though maybe a larger problem in general is that most IT people now have a very narrow field of knowledge. Now add in a "stay in your lane" or "not my job/specialty" attitude that is somewhat common in corporate culture.The "IT Generalist" that actually has specialized depth of knowledge/experience in several areas is not as common now as they once were.
This has probably had the largest impact in IT security. The average IT worker now often lacks a sufficient systems security knowledge, if they have any IT security knowledge at all. Even within the cybersecurity field there are plenty of people in cybersecurity positions that only know how to use the various security "tools" but they don't really know coding. Or maybe they just know the basics of networking, or how a server is actually setup, etc. In other words, they are so specialized that they can't see the forest for the trees - which creates blind spots in the security of a complex system. Whereas, the so-called generalist that has specialized in networking, coding, fullstack sys/devops, databases and cybersecurity has a better picture of how the security of all the pieces work individually is more equipped to manage the security of the whole system.
A related issue is that there are many in IT middle to upper management positions that have no real IT skills themselves. So there are many contributing factors to the overall "incompetence" issue. The result is that 98% of companies surveyed by IDC have had a data breach in cloud services in the past two years.
Interestingly enough, that is the same percentage of misconfigured cloud instances found by Intruder's 2026 Cloud Security Index.
It is not a matter of "if" but "when" the cloud services you use will be compromised.
How much the politics and related mental health implications actually affect competence or contribute to widespread system insecurities, etc. I couldn't really say. The data says that social liberals are more likely to have certain traits (authoritarianism, aggressiveness, manipulation, tough mindedness, risk taking, irresponsibility, and impulsivity) which happen to align with common Cluster B personality disorder traits. Also data shows that the LGBTQ population are predominantly democrats and that trans, particularly, have a very high Cluster B comorbidity (~80%, with some researchers considering Gender Dysphoria as being a manifestation of, or subgroup of, BPD). If there is data specifically about Cluster B disorders in IT professions I have not found it. As for Cluster B specifically, one has to connect the dots with data (comorbidities, high incidence of DV perps, etc.) since those disorders are underreported, commonly misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, etc.
From easily available data, one could conclude that there is a higher prevalence of Cluster B traits to be found in the IT field. Obviously this could be an issue when it comes to personal or work relationships, but just how much higher the chance of someone in IT is of being a Cluster B than the general population overall, and whether that has any bearing on products or services is debatable. For whatever it's worth, below is a chart of various computer related occupations and their estimated political makeup.
Occupational Breakdown by Political Alignment
Percentages of Republicans across all IT occupations.
| Code | Occupation | Employees | Reg. % Rep | Imputed % Rep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15-1252.00 | Software Developers | 506,677 | 34.80% | 34.10% |
| 15-1299.09 | Information Technology Project Managers | 455,794 | 44.40% | 43.70% |
| 15-2051.01 | Business Intelligence Analysts | 292,627 | 38.40% | 37.40% |
| 15-1232.00 | Computer User Support Specialists | 240,485 | 39.30% | 40.20% |
| 15-1299.08 | Computer Systems Engineers/Architects | 237,318 | 44.10% | 43.40% |
| 11-3021.00 | Computer and Information Systems Managers | 134,365 | 49.80% | 50.10% |
| 15-1211.00 | Computer Systems Analysts | 108,503 | 44.90% | 45.00% |
| 15-1253.00 | Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers | 83,802 | 38.40% | 37.20% |
| 15-1244.00 | Network and Computer Systems Administrators | 73,865 | 46.50% | 47.30% |
| 15-2051.00 | Data Scientists | 73,492 | 29.00% | 28.00% |
| 15-1255.00 | Web and Digital Interface Designers | 68,222 | 27.30% | 27.90% |
| 15-1231.00 | Computer Network Support Specialists | 65,767 | 46.90% | 47.90% |
| 15-1299.05 | Information Security Engineers | 59,462 | 45.60% | 45.60% |
| 15-1243.00 | Database Architects | 54,484 | 41.70% | 40.50% |
| 15-1241.00 | Computer Network Architects | 53,021 | 49.40% | 49.60% |
| 15-1254.00 | Web Developers | 52,743 | 33.60% | 33.90% |
| 15-1212.00 | Information Security Analysts | 51,827 | 42.50% | 42.50% |
| 15-1243.01 | Data Warehousing Specialists | 48,215 | 42.00% | 41.00% |
| 15-1251.00 | Computer Programmers | 38,556 | 44.80% | 44.90% |
| 15-1211.01 | Health Informatics Specialists | 37,201 | 43.30% | 43.40% |
| 15-1221.00 | Computer and Information Research Scientists | 32,152 | 29.50% | 28.70% |
| 49-2011.00 | Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers | 30,373 | 47.50% | 48.20% |
| 15-1241.01 | Telecommunications Engineering Specialists | 30,353 | 52.10% | 52.80% |
| 17-2072.00 | Electronics Engineers, Except Computer | 26,360 | 45.20% | 43.20% |
| 15-2051.02 | Clinical Data Managers | 21,859 | 38.70% | 38.30% |
| 15-1242.00 | Database Administrators | 20,967 | 46.10% | 46.00% |
| 15-1299.07 | Blockchain Engineers | 20,689 | 37.20% | 36.40% |
| 25-1021.00 | Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary | 20,502 | 38.40% | 39.00% |
| 15-2041.00 | Statisticians | 20,024 | 28.60% | 28.10% |
| 15-1299.03 | Document Management Specialists | 19,405 | 40.50% | 41.00% |
| 15-1299.02 | Geographic Information Systems Technologists and Technicians | 16,712 | 37.2% | 37.7% |
| 17-2061.00 | Computer Hardware Engineers | 15,204 | 45.5% | 44.7% |
| 43-9071.00 | Office Machine Operators, Except Computer | 11,782 | 35.7% | 36.6% |
| 15-2011.00 | Actuaries | 11,674 | 43.9% | 41.4% |
| 15-1299.01 | Web Administrators | 11,591 | 36.9% | 37.8% |
| 15-1299.06 | Digital Forensics Analysts | 10,606 | 42.7% | 42.9% |
| 15-1299.04 | Penetration Testers | 9,985 | 39.8% | 39.8% |
| 15-1255.01 | Video Game Designers | 6,866 | 25.8% | 26.8% |
| 15-2031.00 | Operations Research Analysts | 5,125 | 45.4% | 44.1% |
| 15-2041.01 | Biostatisticians | 4,802 | 31.0% | 27.5% |
| 51-9162.00 | Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Programmers | 3,085 | 59.7% | 60.7% |
| 51-9161.00 | Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Operators | 1,294 | 57.8% | 59.7% |
| 15-2099.01 | Bioinformatics Technicians | 987 | 32.0% | 29.9% |
| 15-1299.00 | Computer Occupations, All Other | 969 | 39.7% | 38.8% |
| 15-2099.00 | Mathematical Science Occupations, All Other | 760 | 27.3% | 25.4% |
| 15-2021.00 | Mathematicians | 438 | 33.8% | 33.0% |
* - Data Source: https://politicsatwork.org/. Go there for methodology, explanation of the difference between registered and imputed numbers, etc.