A growing number of Americans and researchers suggest that many corporations in the U.S. contribute to both Democrats and Republicans, so that no matter who wins the election, corporations can still exert their influence in Washington.  But, does this line of thought have any merit?  As they say, let's simply "follow the money".

The following firms are ranked in order of their total contributions for 2008.  But, the chart below illustrates their total contributions over the last 20 years.  Every firm on this list is defined as "on the fence", meaning they have leaned neither Republican, nor Democrat and have largely donated to both parties.  This information was compiled from http://www.opensecrets.org/.
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(The asterisk [*] denotes companies who have recently made equal contributions, despite their 20 year history of a party preference.  Contact the Federal Election Committee or opensecret.org for more information.)

A blogger at albatross.org correctly stated in 1994, "The problem in America isn't that the Republ