Partisanship Is Making Americans Vote For Things They Don't Actually Want

[SharonClark]

Interesting response to when people ask "How can they vote against their own interests".

Why Americans vote against their interests, and why it’s just going to get worse.
By Michael Hobbes

Last week’s election was, as usual, utterly baffling.

Voters in Florida decisively passed a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage, but also decisively favored Donald Trump, a candidate who believes the minimum wage is just fine where it is. Deep-red Montana, Mississippi and South Dakota liberalized marijuana laws. Bright-blue California and Illinois rejected rent control and income taxes, respectively.

This is nothing new. Every election is a fresh demonstration that the United States is a nation of individuals, not groups, and that those individuals have beliefs that don’t fall neatly along partisan lines.

“Most people aren’t ideological in the way journalists, political scientists and talking heads are,” said Christopher Witko, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who researches inequality and American elections. “If you’re someone who follows politics closely, knowing your position on the minimum wage makes it pretty easy to predict your position on taxes and abortion. But that’s not how it works for most of the public.”

More here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-voter-behavior-makes-no-sense_n_5fac6010c5b6d647a39b7f1d