This question seems to imply that objective "best" answers to questions of minimum wage, immigration policy, and trade policy are obvious. This may indicate naivete. (It almost seems to be implied that the writer thinks that minimum wage increases reduce the demand for labor. But even at the freshman level one would have to know the elasticity to know how a price increase would impact demand. I'm reading a bit into the question here but the empirically and theoretically incorrect argument that minimum wage increases necessarily decrease employment is common.)

It's fascinating that this question would be asked in this context. One major point of behavioral economics is, in a sense, that theory should fit the empirical data.

I would argue that 99% of economics students enter the field with subjective, normative preferences. Mainly a "pro-management" perspective that is inherently hostile to minimum wage, pollution control, and the public sector, although in some cases the subjective preferences are the opposite. Academic economics most certainly does not seem to do a good job of present objective theories that trump prior biases. Put a group of evolution denying students into a mainstream biology program will lead some to abandon their prior bias. But economics students probably just come out favoring the same policies they went in favoring.

I don't mean to be dismissive of economics as a field; I think it's worthwhile.

What I am being dismissive of is the idea that "if people don't favor what I favor it's because they aren't as economically and financially informed as I am".

Of course people often perform poorly on basic finance decisions, but that's not what the question complains about; it complains about peoples' voting choices on the issues of minimum wage, trade, and immigration.