An Oct. 8 Axios report on a new Bentley University-Gallup polling offers corporate America a timely and necessary reminder: Customers aren’t interested in political lectures with their purchases. Just 47 percent of U.S. adults say businesses should take public positions on current events, down four percent from 51 percent last year. A 53 percent majority would rather companies just stay out of politics.
The new findings undercut what progressive activists — including the antigun crowd — have demanded for years from corporate boards, including bending the corporate knee to Environment, Social and Governance mobs and backroom corporate boards making decisions with little regard for fiduciary concerns.
For those executives who have treated this corporate activism as a business obligation, the poll should get their attention. The familiar warning, “Go woke, go broke,” may be an overstatement when applied to every company, but the new findings make clear that political posturing is hardly a risk-free strategy. And Americans quickly got tired of it.
Customers Aren’t a Captive Audience
The Bentley-Gallup Business in Society survey questioned 3,270 U.S. adults May 4–11. Its results reveal a sharp partisan divide. While 62 percent of Democrats favor companies speaking out on current events (no surprise there), only 45 percent of self-described Independents and 28 percent of Republicans agree. In an eye-opening sea change, though, even among those Democrats, support for corporations taking public stands on politics dropped almost 10 percentage points in just the last year.
Age makes a difference, too. Sixty percent of adults ages 18–29 support corporate statements on current events, compared with just 38 percent of those 60 and older. Employees aren’t exactly asking for more workplace politics, either. Fifty-six percent say their own employers should not communicate positions on current events. They don’t want to be placed in a position of answering for their boss’s political stances.
There is also an important limit to the findings, though. This is a survey of attitudes, not corporate balance sheets. It does not establish that political messaging caused any particular business to lose money. For that, look at what actually happened when companies made consequential choices.
Gun Control Politics Can Carry a Price Tag
One prime example within the firearm industry for consideration is Dick’s Sporting Goods. Following the 2018 Parkland school shooting tragedy, the retailer, which previously lawfully sold modern sporting rifles and other varieties of commonly used firearms, announced major restrictions on firearm sales, including no longer offering customers MSRs, and raised its minimum purchase age to 21.
But removing the firearms from their shelves wasn’t the retail giant’s only move. Dick’s actually went above and beyond simply removing certain firearms from their shelves for customers to purchase. The retail giant hired a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm to help advocate for stricter state and federal gun control laws. Those actions were a bridge too far for the firearm industry trade association, the Board of Governors of which unanimously voted to expel Dick’s “for conduct detrimental to the best interests of the Foundation.”
It’s one thing to choose which products you make available for your customers. It’s an entirely different choice to actively pursue and support gun control policies that go against the very tenants and Second Amendment rights the industry stands for. Fortune reported in October 2019 that customers shifting their business to competing retailers cost Dick’s approximately $300 million in sales during.
Dick’s later reported a rebound in comparable sales during the first half of 2019, so the company certainly did not “go broke.” But that recovery does not erase the customers or revenue it lost following its policy changes. Former CEO Ed Stack acknowledged that some alienated customers were gone for good.
“The announcement we made two weeks ago is not going to be positive from a traffic and sales standpoint,” Stack said at the time.
But the firearm industry, specifically, has seen an even more consequential version of publicly stated corporate activism when financial institutions attempt to impose their own gun control policies through banking decisions. A retailer deciding what merchandise to stock is one thing. A bank denying a lawful manufacturer access to credit or payment services because its products are politically disfavored is another.
Citigroup reversed its previous banking restrictions on firearm industry customers in June 2025 following years of NSSF opposition. In January 2026, JPMorgan Chase informed NSSF that it had removed a firmwide restriction specifically on lending to manufacturers of modern sporting rifles for civilian use.
JPMorgan Chase also acknowledged that some of the anticipated commercial risks associated with lending to those manufacturers had proved less significant than expected. The bank recognized something else: Turning away prospective customers carries risks of its own. That is a significant admission from a major financial institution that previously maintained restrictions on lending to a lawful segment of the firearm industry.
Stripe, Circle, Bill.com, Ramp and others have all reversed course, following NSSF inquiries, after initially blocking financial services to firearm industry members before changing their tune. It turns out, making it public that certain kinds of business aren’t welcome, hurts the bottom line.
A Business Model Is Not a Political Platform
The distinction matters. Companies are free to express views and choose how to position their brands. Customers are equally free to take their business elsewhere. Financial institutions, meanwhile, should assess lawful businesses on objective commercial and financial risks rather than use access to essential services as leverage for publicly stated ideological demands.
The latest Gallup results do not demonstrate that every political stand is commercially disastrous. They do show why companies should think twice before assuming that public political advocacy speaks for their customers, employees or shareholders.
Corporate executives can call their messaging a statement of values. Customers can call it a reason to shop elsewhere. And when corporate activism reaches beyond speech to penalize lawful firearm businesses, to suppress the exercise of constitutional rights, the consequences go well beyond lost sales.
That is the reality behind “Go woke, go broke”: The public does not owe corporate America its agreement, its applause or its business.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.