You might be right about the voting patterns since economists are generally academics, and academic departments are all relatively liberal.

But the issue isn't about conservatism or even Republican identification, so much as libertarianism. The Democratic Party these days (as in over the last few decades) is more neoliberal than progressive. So I suppose the US voting habits issue is indeed a red herring. What's relevant, for instance, is whether economists are more libertarian or economically "conservative" than noneconomists, on average, and whether that's so because of the predominance of neoclassical dogmas in economics.

I knew you were going to quibble about whether Obama fully took over the banks. And who cares indeed about the socialism issue? That was your quibble, not mine. What I said is that "The fact that one is left-leaning (socialist) and the other is right-leaning (libertarian) is common knowledge." And because you've been hyper-defensive throughout these exchanges, you quibbled about whether "socialism" is the right word.

What matters isn't the definition of "socialist," but whether economics is politicized, whether economists are split on ideological grounds that conflict with the scientific culture of humanism, thus complicating the scientific status of economics.