When it comes to investments, the expectations of Obama supporters have yielded positive returns this year. In January, the Media and Public Opinion (MPO) Research Group asked registered voters to predict the best investments for the coming year and found that Obama supporters were better than average at picking high-performing investments. Voters who disapprove of the president were more likely to back gold, one of the biggest disappointments of 2013.
Long considered on of the safest investments available, gold has hit its lowest value since 2010, dropping 10% today and over 15% in the past two days. Overall, gold was picked as the best investment by 28.1% of the voting population. Political leanings affected investment predictions: gold was preferred by only 14.3% of Obama supporters, while 41.6% of those who disapprove of the president chose gold.
Voters who approved of Obama’s job performance were most likely to choose stocks (31.5%) or real estate (25.4%) as good investments, both of which have been strong performers during the first quarter of 2013. Only 11.7% of Obama detractors chose stocks as the best choice, while 15.3% chose real estate.
Those who were correct in predicting stocks as a good investment were also the most confident in their personal financial futures—over half of respondents choosing stocks (58.5%) or bonds (54.1%) expected their financial situation to improve over the year, while only about a quarter (24.3%) of those favoring gold did. In his case, the expectation for increased wealth appears as a self-fulfilling prophecy: optimists would logically choose the more volatile investments, which have performed well, while pessimists would likely choose something traditionally reliable, like gold.
Data was collected from a survey of 564 people during the month of January 2013. The margin of error is 4.13%. For more information on the methodology contact media@mpopost.com or visit www.mpopost.com.
MPO research group surveys are conducted from a national telephone panel of over 8,000 randomly selected individuals in the United States, accurately reflecting all backgrounds in terms of age, education, ethnicity, gender and political affiliation. It is important to highlight that panel members are randomly selected. avoiding the bias of self-selection. Raw survey data, once gathered, is then weighted to accurately reflect demographic and voting (political questions only) populations.
