A commenter points me to a post by Robert Frank, The Rich Support McCain, the Super-Rich Support Obama:
More than three quarters of those worth $1 million to $10 million plan to vote for Sen. McCain. Only 15% plan to vote for Sen. Obama (the rest are undecided). Of those worth more than $30 million, two-thirds support Sen. Obama, while one third support Sen. McCain. ... Among Lower Richistani's, 88% cited tax policies as being "important" in making their decision. Only 11% cited the environment, 22% cited health care and 45% cited social issues. Among the Upper Richistani's supporting Sen. Obama, tax policies ranked last, with only 16% citing them as important. "Social issues" ranked first, with "policies dealing with wars" ranking second (67%) and Supreme Court nominations and health-care issues ranking next.
This is a survey of 493 families, so one wonders about the power of the sample size as well as representativeness. But, the difference between the two groups is very large. Does this pass the smell test? To some extent I think it does when it is noted that social issues is one area where the wealthy tend to be much more libertarian than the American public, on average. The same magazine which reported that most CEOs support John McCain also noted that 4 years ago executives preferred that Republicans stay away from social issues. In the $1-10 million bracket it seems plausible that tax policy could have significant effect on lifestyle in terms of consumption, as well as the ability to leverage capital so one could ascend up the class ladder.* On the other hand, it may be that in the range of tens of millions of dollars an individual gets very little marginal return on $5 million dollars here and $5 million dollars there. With the lack of constraint on personal consumption due to the vicissitudes of tax policy, social issues would naturally come to the fore. But, one also wonders if the focus on war reflects the macroeconomic concerns of the super-rich. That is, they are relatively buffered from year-to-year changes in tax policy in terms of their lifestyle, but they worry disproportionately about the instability which might emerge out of foreign expansion. In other words if the system collapses or fails the super-rich have the most lose despite being buffered from year-to-year changes in tax policy by their enormous wealth. * A higher tax bill might mean that one purchases an extra vacation home in the United States, as opposed to Switzerland. And a higher tax bill might reduce the discretionary capital which one might use to enter into riskier, but high yield, investments, that might lead to more wealth and therefore no concern about the price differences between a home in Colorado vs. Switzerland.
