Do you vote your self-interest?

An article in Bloomberg Businessweek got me thinking.  For the past three years, the stock of Ruger (gun manufacturer) has skyrocketed.  The article quotes some gun experts who speculate that in 2008 it was because Obama got elected and gun owners wanted to make sure they had their guns before he potentially made it harder to get them.  Then, when there were riots in Greece and then London, people may have purchased guns out of fear that something similar could happen here considering how bad the economy is. 

There are socially responsible mutual funds that won’t invest in companies that make guns like Ruger.  But I was thinking about the reverse case.  What if you were a gun company owner and a conservative?  Would you listen to your conscience and vote for the conservative candidate because you think he/she would be the best for the country?  Or would you go with your own self-interest and vote for a liberal, predicting that it would spike gun sales and improve your business?  Do you vote your conscience or your self-interest (if they diverge)?

This may seem like a rare case, but not really.  For a moment, accept the generalization that liberal policies are generally better for people of low income (minimum wage, health care, safety) and conservative policies are better for people of high income (tax cuts, low capital gains taxes, deregulation).  I know this always true, but we vote a President in for four years, not policy by policy), so a generalization is important.  In this case, every low income conservative and high income liberal is making this tradeoff – voting their conscience over their self-interest.

How do you vote?