Where are the people who are polled when it is time to vote?

[Chathamization]

5. People don't care enough, and/or are lead to believe it doesn't matter. Same issue with progressives

in primaries - just about know one pays attention or shows up to vote, and then we have some corporatist Democrat elected (and to rub salt in the wound, we then get people saying that this shows that voting doesn't matter). Or even worse, state party politics - you get a ton of people unhappy with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but ever try to convince people to vote against the people who elected her? It's hard to get people to even pay attention to 95% of the people they vote for on the ballot.

A lot of people don't care enough to pay attention, and a lot believe it doesn't matter, and this is a problem pretty much across the board. Another big problem is the few times that people do pay attention and vote for an individual, they often do so for silly reasons instead of actual policy. They saw some comedian making fun of a certain politician so they think that politician is a joke, but they couldn't tell you anything about their policy (or the policy of the person they're voting for). Or you ask why they're voting for someone, and they say it's because that politician is a really good person, or they're good on issue X (often times something where their opponent and other politicians have the exact same stance).

Political apathy and illiteracy is a huge problem, it manifest just about everywhere, and it's dragging the country down.