It's also an overly simple view of things. The 40% that vote for the loser aren't expressing dissent, only a much smaller percentage of them are expressing di

It's also an overly simple view of things. The 40% that vote for the loser aren't expressing dissent, only a much smaller percentage of them are expressing dissent. It's not a binary problem. That simplifies everything way too much. The candidates are too similar for it to be dissent. You have to go to the fringe topics to really make them disagree in the first place, you have to bring up abortion or which stem cell lines the federal dollars go to, or gay marriage or crap like that to even get them to start to disagree. Politics is competitive, the best politicians will hire the best analysts to study the polls of the masses and come up with platforms that appeal to the broadest set of people possible so that they can win the election. Likewise, the elections will continue to be "close" because of that.