Shareholder voting in support of politically radical proposals on big companies’ proxy ballots—the “environmental” and “social” components of so-called ESG investing—is in decline. In this year’s corporate voting season, only four such proposals received majority shareholder support, compared with 82 between 2020 and 2022. On average, left-leaning environmental and social proposals won support from just 16 percent of shareholders this proxy season, down from 33 percent in 2021. That’s a good thing: left-leaning environmental and social shareholder proposals, to the extent they’re at all germane to company performance, have been inversely correlated with share value.
With the change in administration in…
