Bernie Sanders is seeing a surge of support from well-off, leftwing staff at tech firms such as Apple and Google. Is it because they can see the game is rigged?

For the first time in a long time, it’s fun to be a member of the American left. A socialist is within spitting distance of the White House. Bernie Sanders may not win the nomination, but his extraordinary primary run has proven the mainstream viability of leftwing politics in a country that’s spent decades drifting to the right.

The core pieces of the coalition that’s made his achievement possible are well-known from exit polls: millennials, lower-income Americans, and independents. But Bernie’s also benefited from another, more surprising bloc of support, one that may prove just as important to the future of American leftism: tech workers.

According to analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings by the Center for Responsive Politics, four of the top five employers of Sanders donors are tech companies. Google is number one, its employees having contributed more than $200,000. Microsoft, Apple and Amazon occupy the third, fourth and fifth spots respectively. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has no tech companies in her top five, and only one in her top 20.

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Sanders also appears to be receiving far more individual contributions from tech workers than Clinton. A software engineer and Sanders supporter named Bill Schaller used the FEC filings to produce a pair of pie charts that break both sets of contributors down by occupation. Technology and education are the leading fields among Sanders donors, while Clinton’s are legal and retirees.

Momentum behind Sanders in tech is growing. As the Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed recently reported, Bernie has seen a significant surge in contributions from the tech industry since late 2015, and is now out-raising Clinton more than two to one among tech workers. These seem to be first-time contributors, since the amount of cash going to Clinton has remained steady while the amount going to Sanders continues to rise.

It might seem strange that some of the highest-paid workers in the country are throwing their money at a socialist who rails against the 1%. But it’s not a fluke. The second most famous socialist in America, Seattle city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, also enjoys support from tech workers. A former software engineer herself, Sawant regularly draws large contributions from employees of Seattle tech giants Microsoft and Amazon – despite (or because of) her position that both companies should be publicly owned, worker-run enterprises.

The phenomenon of tech leftism challenges the prevailing wisdom about the politics of the industry

The phenomenon of tech leftism challenges the prevailing wisdom about the politics of the industry. Tech workers are typically expected to be libertarians on the model of Peter Thiel, or neoliberal “Atari Democrats” of the kind courted by the Democratic party since the 1980s. In both cases, they’re thought to favor free-market ideology over regulation and redistribution.

But the data suggests there’s a sizable contingent of leftwing tech workers as well. Where did they come from? And why are they embracing a politics that seems to run counter to their economic self-interest?

One possibility is they’re motivated by guilt. As tech workers have flooded into cities like San Francisco, they’ve driven up rents and helped create an eviction crisis – and faced fierce criticism as a result. They also embody income inequality, earning significantly higher salaries than the people who share their workplaces as shuttle drivers, security guards, and janitors.

But there’s another theory for why Sanders is finding support within the tech industry. It’s simple: these tech workers, like other members of the Bernie coalition, support Sanders because they believe his policies will help them. They’re not supporting Sanders against their self-interest. They’re supporting Sanders out of self-interest.

How could that be? A few reasons. First, although tech workers earn high salaries, they’re not high enough to keep pace with rising housing costs in the cities where they’re likely to work. According to PayScale, the median salary for a software engineer in San Francisco is around $100,000 – post-tax, this comes out to roughly $70,000. With median one-bedroom rents in San Francisco hovering around $3,500, this means the average software engineer spends 60% of their take-home pay on housing.

It could be worse. They could be evicted or priced out entirely, the fate of many working-class families in San Francisco. But these figures offer a useful basis for understanding why Sanders’ message is resonating with certain tech workers. San Francisco is a particularly extreme example, but other tech-heavy cities aren’t far behind: San Jose, Seattle and Boston all regularly rank among the most expensive rental markets in America. And if you’re spending more than half your income on rent in a city with a hot housing market, buying a home will be hard – especially as all-cash deals become more popular. It would take our average software engineer 40 years of saving every penny of their post-rent income to pay cash for a house in San Francisco in today’s prices.

The richest 10%​ of American households receive more than a quarter of the nation’s income, but own 76% of its wealth

The fact that even the typical tech worker isn’t immune to the economic forces that Sanders talks about in his speeches illustrates an important point. The biggest dividing line in a capitalist economy isn’t between those who earn a high wage and those who earn a low wage. It’s between those who work and those who own capital.

Wages matter, of course: “super salaries” among the top 1% of earners (currently, those who make half a million a year) have grown sharply since the 1970s, while wages have flatlined for everyone else. But as bad as income inequality is, wealth inequality is much worse. The richest 10% of American households receive more than a quarter of the nation’s income, but own 76% of its wealth – real estate, stocks, bonds, bank accounts, and so on.

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With numbers like these, it’s not hard to understand why even tech workers making a hundred grand a year might see themselves as beneficiaries of Bernie-style redistribution. Last week, many took to the streets of San Francisco in support of Sanders, highlighting the widening gap between tech workers and their venture capitalist bosses. These workers studied the right thing in school, perhaps even took on significant debt to do so, and still find themselves facing an uphill climb to what, a generation ago, would’ve been considered middle class.

The tech industry’s well-documented faith in meritocracy has come under much legitimate criticism for its role in keeping tech overwhelmingly white and male. But if you believe your hard work and intelligence qualifies you for a comfortable life, and still wonder whether you’ll be able to afford to own a home or send your kids to college or retire, you might be tempted to conclude the game is rigged.

Of course, tech workers still enjoy better salaries, benefits and bargaining power than most. But it’s worth observing that capitalism, in its current, highly financialized form, has created an economy so unequal and so predatory that even relatively well-off sectors can feel squeezed. This presents an organizing opportunity. The people who are plotting the next phase of Sanders’ political revolution will need resources – and tech workers might offer a valuable source of funds. They may not be able to afford a house in San Francisco, but they can afford to put a few more socialists in office.