Back in 2020, the company behind Goods Unite Us – the app that allows you to shop according to your politics – launched an index fund on NASDAQ called the Democratic Large-Cap Core Fund, with the ticker DEMZ.

The fund is available on all major stock trading platforms including E-Trade, Robinhood, Schwab, and Fidelity.

DEMZ is an unusual, first-of-its-kind financial product.

The fund can only include S&P 500 companies (i.e., the largest U.S. publicly traded companies), so the fund is full of names you’ve probably heard of, like Google and Microsoft.

The fund is also benchmarked quarterly to the entire S&P 500—meaning it is designed to mimic the entire market as closely as possible.

For the finance nerds out there, the fund also includes a 5% cap on the largest single stock and a sector balance that deviates no more than 5% from the S&P 500’s sector composition.

The fund is labeled “Democratic” because Goods Unite Us tracks the companies’ and their executives’ political giving to make sure the companies in the fund are not bankrolling Republicans.

More specifically, DEMZ can only include an S&P 500 company’s stock if the company’s executives (CEO, General Counsel, etc.) and its political action committee have contributed more than 75% combined to Democratic federal politicians over the last 3 election cycles (roughly 6 years).

Put simply, DEMZ is the S&P—without the GOP.

There are about 120 companies in the S&P 500 that meet the DEMZ 75% threshold. But the fund typically only includes around 40 to 60 of them.

For example, from the Technology Sector, DEMZ currently includes Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft, all of whom have executives who have contributed overwhelmingly to Democrats pursuant to the publicly available Federal Election Commission data. Conversely, DEMZ does not include Oracle and Dell because their executives have contributed significantly more to Republicans than Democrats.

Ulta Beauty and Ralph Lauren are included in DEMZ from the Consumer Discretionary sector; right-leaning companies like Tesla and Home Depot are not.

In the Communication Services sector, Netflix and Electronic Arts are included in the fund; AT&T and Charter Communications are not.

DEMZ is basically a retirement asset for Democrats who want to put their money in the market without investing in Republican-supporting companies. Or that is what Goods Unite Us and its investment team thought at launch back on Election Day 2020.

However, DEMZ marked its fifth anniversary on Friday, October 31, 2025. And guess what?

DEMZ hasn’t just tracked the market–it has also outperformed it by 7.81% over the last 5 years!
(Compare SPY to DEMZ.)

DEMZ launched at a price of $20.25 per share in 2020, and five years later, on October 31, 2025, DEMZ closed at a price of $43.19 per share.

That is a 113.38% total return over the 5 years!

While this performance is impressive, it also could be used to argue something else:

Democrats have been better at running large U.S. companies than Republicans over the last five years.

Individual executive contributions comprise roughly 80 to 90% of the political contributions Goods Unite Us tracks, with corporate political action committee contributions comprising the other 10 to 20%.

In other words, DEMZ is filtering companies based primarily on senior executive, c-suite political contributions, and the companies with Democrats in the c-suite have outperformed the entire stock market over five-years.

Does this mean that people should only invest in companies who have Democrats as executives and not look at anything else? Of course not.

But the data says what it says. And it is certainly interesting.

Of course, this all begs the question:

Why have the companies with Democrats in the c-suite outperformed?

There are many possible reasons.

Democrats as a class are typically more concerned about employee rights and corporate impacts on society than Republicans. Democrats in leadership positions could therefore be facilitating better work environments than Republicans.

Democrats as a class are also less likely to challenge and try to thwart government regulation than Republicans—which could lead to less government enforcement and/or less negative publicity towards Democrat-run companies.

Although Democrats in company leadership might be ahead in stock performance, ironically the Republicans are leading in the market demand for these types of political-oriented financial products.

The American Conservative Values Fund (ticker: ACVF) launched within a few days of DEMZ.

ACVF is a large-cap fund designed for investors seeking to align their portfolios with conservative values while maintaining exposure to the broader U.S. equity market.

ACVF has underperformed DEMZ since launch.

But ACVF’s current assets under management are $138 million.

Comparatively, DEMZ’s assets under management are $51 million—or nearly three times less than ACVF’s.

Democrats therefore might be better at running America’s largest companies. But so far, they have not been better at putting their investment money where their vote is.