2026 proxy season shows mixed shifts: independent chair and GHG support diverge from volume, while written consent proposals see both rise

Filing volume is a decision proponents make on their own, and average support is the answer institutional investors give, which is why the two numbers can move apart inside a single season. Independent chair proposals are the clearest case in the D.F. King data: submissions rose about 3.2 times, from 31 to 99, and 79 of those 99 went to a vote, roughly four in five ^[11][1][3]. The larger campaign converted worse, with average support down 6.85 points to 24.45% ^[11][2]. A board reading only the intake would conclude this was the season's most pressing structural fight.

Written consent moved the other way. Submissions went from 12 companies to 51, about 4.25 times, and three quarters of those reached ballots, roughly 38 votes, with average support up 9.61 points to 35.93% ^{[12][4][5][6]}. That is the highest average support figure in the memo, ahead of independent chair at 24.45%, GHG emissions at 19.68% and share-class vote disclosure at 17.33% ^{[8][10][11][13]}. Greenhouse gas proposals traced the same pattern in reverse: filings halved to 21, implying roughly 42 the year before, while average support rose about 50% to 19.68%, which puts the 2025 average near 13.1% ^[10][12][7]. D.F. King does not offer a mechanism for the inverse relationship, so the pairing is a pattern in two categories rather than an established cause.

Against that, the anti-ESG line in this report is thinner than its prominence suggests. D.F. King says submissions decreased meaningfully and average support remains in the single digits, but publishes neither a count for the category nor the size of the decline, and notes the topic stayed in the upper half of its top-proposals list ^[2][10]. The one hard number attached to an anti-ESG proponent is a proposal on H-1B visa program risk that drew 0.2% support ^[7]. Immigration proposals as a group stayed in single digits, with four filed on policy impact and three voted ^[6][8].

A skeptic would say support averages are the wrong scorecard, because proponents in this space are building a public record and testing management rather than trying to win a vote, and the 0.2% result is entirely consistent with that reading ^[7]. Fair, and it changes the shape of the response rather than removing the need for one. What it does not do is make the category a ballot risk, and support above 30% did not equal a win either: the political contributions and lobbying proposals cleared 30% and none of them passed ^[4].

The gap a board is allocating against is at least 25.9 points, comparing the written consent average with the single-digit ceiling on anti-ESG support ^[9]. Two things in the record are genuinely unsettled. The memo counts at least 14 proposals on AI risk oversight and reports no support levels for them, so how investors voted on that subject is not yet known from this data ^[9][11]. And the anti-ESG topic list keeps migrating, into transgender-related business decisions, abortion-related drugs and religious and political discrimination, which is a question about the next several years rather than this quarter ^[3]. This quarter, the choice is where off-season engagement goes; a board that apportions it by how many proposals arrived will spend it on the category where support fell.