Left-wing ideology has taken root in medical education, and it likely isn’t the work of a mere vocal minority. Federal campaign contribution records from donors who listed a U.S. medical school as their employer show that about 87% of contributions went to left-wing candidates, party committees, and political action committees, and just 4% went to right-wing ones. As donors tend to be more extreme than average voters, this is both evidence of and a possible explanation for the institutional capture of medical education more broadly.

We searched the Federal Election Commission database for donations made between Jan. 1, 2025, and Sept. 2, 2026, entering the full name or a common variant of every U.S. medical school in the employer field and excluding donors who listed their occupation as “student.” (Also necessarily excluded were medical-school employees who listed only the parent university as their employer, those whose listed employer was ambiguous between the medical school and a similarly named hospital or clinic, and donations with the employer misspelled.) This returned partisan political contributions by employees at approximately 72% of U.S. allopathic (Doctor of Medicine degree-granting) medical schools.