Proxy-Voting Trends in 2025: Widening Gaps in Asset Manager Voting Preferences

Proxy-voting certainly took the spotlight in 2025.  

We saw the SEC narrow the scope of permissible shareholder proposals toward the beginning of the year. And toward the end, a White House executive order placed further scrutiny on proxy-vote advisors.  

Concerns that proxy advisors’ recommendations “advance and prioritize radical politically-motivated agendas” and serve “as a vehicle for investment advisers to coordinate… their voting decisions” featured strongly. 

However, our latest research on voting trends by the largest US asset managers over the last three years tells a different story.

What's inside:

• A deep dive into the declining significance of E&S resolutions. 
• Key trends in voting support across US and European asset managers. 
• Insights into the support for management resolutions.

Our latest research paper looks at the proxy-voting patterns of 50 of the largest US managers of equity and allocation funds. We found that as a group, voters at these entities have become more supportive of management over recent years.  

Average support for management resolutions at companies in the Morningstar US Large-Mid Cap index increased in the 2025 proxy year to just over 96% from close to 95% in the prior two years, as shown on the chart below.

The increase was largely driven by greater support for director elections, which make up around 78% of all management resolutions each year.  

Advisory votes on executive compensation (which comprise around 8% of all management resolutions) consistently attract around 10% shareholder opposition each year on average. However, there has also been a noticeable increase in support for these proposals in the last three proxy years. 

Meanwhile, over the same period, average support for shareholder resolutions fell. The chart below shows that shareholder proposals on environmental and social themes fared worst, with these bearing the strongest impacts from the SEC’s actions during the year.

However, when we split the top 50 US asset managers according to size, what we see is the opposite of coordinated activity.  

In fact, there’s a marked divergence between the voting patterns of the largest 10 US asset managers and the other 40 US managers in the study. The top 10 include the Big Three index managers: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street; plus Capital Group, Dimensional, Fidelity including funds subadvised by Geode, Invesco, J.P. Morgan, Schwab, and T. Rowe Price.

Looking first at management resolutions, shown on the chart above, we see the top 10 asset managers recorded the strongest increases in support for management resolutions. Average support for management resolutions among the top 10 US managers increased to 97.5% in the 2025 proxy year compared with 97.1% in 2024 and 96.1% in 2023. 

Among the Big Three index managers, we observed the same trend with higher support levels. On average, the Big Three managers backed 98.7% of management resolutions in the 2025 proxy year, compared with 98.0% in 2024 and 96.0% in 2023. In contrast, the remaining 40 US managers’ average support stood at around 94% to 95% over the past three years, with a slight increase in 2025. 

In the past three proxy years, average percentage support for shareholder resolutions by the Big Three index managers stood in single digits. In 2025, this number stood at 7.5%, having fallen from around 9.0% in the previous two proxy years.  

We also observed a falling trend in support for the top 10 as a whole. On average, the 10 firms cast 12.4% of their fund votes in support of shareholder proposals in the 2025 proxy year, down slightly from 13.3% in 2024 and 15.2% in 2025. 

The other 40 firms’ average support for shareholder resolutions also displayed a falling trend but stood consistently higher than that of the top 10 over the three-year period. In the 2025 proxy year, the 40 firms’ average support for shareholder resolutions was 28.8%, compared with 34.6% in 2024 and 38.2% in 2023. 

It’s worth also mentioning the differences in voting patterns by sustainable funds and European managers shown on the charts above. Both groups show noticeably lower-than-average support for management resolutions, and higher than average support for shareholder resolutions over the last three years. 

Asset owners rely on proxy-voting records to assess alignment between their own objectives and the asset managers they appoint. The data from Morningstar set out in our paper can help asset owners make that assessment.  

The clear differences in approach to proxy-voting by asset managers can be a boon to asset owners seeking close alignment between their governance and sustainability priorities and asset managers’ implementation methods. We’ve already seen asset owners in the US and Europe seek better alignment by shifting mandates, or considering doing so. But with ongoing regulatory and political scrutiny of proxy-voting practices, it remains challenging to contend with the constantly shifting landscape.