Dilbert’s poll of economists on Obama vs. McCain

Obama wins, 59-31 percent, here is the story.  The individuals responding to the poll had this distribution of opinion:

48 percent — Democrats

17 percent — Republicans

27 percent — Independents

3 percent — Libertarian

5 percent — Other or not registered

In other words, Obama didn’t do as well as I would have expected, relative to the survey group.  There is much more information in the article, such as this:

On the issue of international trade, only 42 percent of our Democratic economists support Obama’s plans, with 34 percent favoring McCain. Independents favored McCain on this question by 63 percent to 16 percent, while favoring Obama overall.

Another indicator of objectivity is that the income levels of the economists have little impact on their opinions. The economists with lower incomes are no more likely to favor taxing the rich than the rich economists favor taxing themselves.

Likewise, economists in the academic world were largely on the same page as the nonacademic types in predicting which candidate would be best for the long term.

I thanks Alice Miller for the pointer.  And if you do leave a comment, note that the marginal return to being partisan in this setting is very low or even negative.

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