Sadly, voters are so easy to gull and manipulate, often because their knowledge of and participation in civic duties is so weak. I can't stress strongly enough, we are still fighting our Civil War, 150 years after it was supposedly ended. Simply overlay a map of the "red states" over a map of the Confederacy and you will see what I mean. Some of the issues have changed, the entire nation was strongly Christian in the 1860s which is far less true today and one of our new stark divides, but the basic fight is still over race and the rural/urban split.

While political scientists once assumed that voters would naturally consult public information and then vote their own best interest this just isn't true. White and rural voters will vote against programs that would benefit them if they suspect (or are told) that Black and Brown people will receive those benefits too. They will vote for pols who promise to uphold their "Christian values" (anti-abortion, prayer in schools, discrimination against LBGTQ people) or their supposed rights to easily purchase and brandish Glocks and AR-15s, regardless of how those pols will vote on the minimum wage.