Lede – The Dow Jones has replaced 1/10th of the companies in its index.

Context – The Dow Jones is one of the most famous and visible measures of the stock market. Like all indices, it’s a statistical measure of change in a group of data points used to represent a larger collection. So a good index will accurately reflect changes in the larger group it’s sampling.

The Dow uses 30 companies, selected by committee, to represent the entire stock market. Its comparatively small number of companies consistently reflect the whole stock market, and economic pressures influencing it, well enough to compete with indices that measure 1000x as many companies (Russel 3000). 

Who Cares? – The 30 companies that comprise the Dow don’t only measure fluctuations in wealth, they reflect broader changes in the US economy. These economic changes affect job availability and industry growth. And as certain companies benefit, so do the political parties and politicians they support. Thanks to Goods Unite Us, we can easily see which political party these companies are supporting. 

The Goods – The companies the Dow dropped were :

	D Donations	R Donations
Exxon Mobil	16%	84%
Pfizer	43%	57%
Raytheon	39%	61%

They were replaced by:

	D Donations	R Donations
Amgen	43%	57%
Honeywell	38%	62%
Salesforce	89%	11%

Even though Honeywell is the 3rd biggest net donor to the Republican party, it’s also the 6th biggest for the Democrats. Given that, Exxon’s departure, and Salesforce’s entry, here’s how the Dow has changed on average:

Old	New
46.1	48.5
53.9	51.5

 

These changes are in keeping with well-known economic trends like the expansion of Tech and contraction of Manufacturing which have expanded the Democratic donor pool at the expense of the Republicans. Together, the Dow changes and industry shifts point to a shrinking vein of money for the GOP to tap into.