Ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections, in every district and at every level, the campaigns are proving to be contentious and charged. It’s a challenging landscape for companies to navigate, especially as fundamental issues their stakeholders care about dominate the political, media and social discourse – from cost of living and workers’ rights to the environment and reproductive rights. 

As a direct result, navigating the 2024 U.S. elections landscape has become increasingly challenging and fraught for companies. Candidates across party lines and up and down the ballot regularly call out Corporate America. 

To help businesses understand the risks related to the U.S. elections, The Weber Shandwick Collective’s Elections Task Force conducted the first-of-its-kind, AI-powered analysis, the Pulse on Political Narratives. We evaluated what candidates across the political spectrum are saying about issues that matter to companies and their stakeholders, the language they are using and what expectations they are communicating for the broader business community.  

We used a large language model to evaluate nearly 200,000 messages from January-May 2024 – campaign emails, digital ads, social media and video posts – across 96 races and the four main campaign committees from each of the major political parties.  

We found that while headlines have largely focused on the “culture wars,” candidates focus much of their business-related campaign rhetoric on more table stakes concerns. Our analysis explores the five issues candidates talked about most regarding the business community, along with insights about what to watch for next on each issue. Read the full report here.