One hilarious example of this effect at work can be found at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_9_29_04.html http://www.pipa.org/Online

One hilarious example of this effect at work can be found at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_9_29_04.html http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_... -- the gist of it is that polling indicates that a decent number of Bush voters in 2004 believed that Bush held policy positions that he never held and in fact never claimed to have held. It is not that Bush lied to these voters about his issue preferences: they just liked him for other reasons and ascribed their own issue preferences to him. John Sides explains a related phenomena here: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_on_2010.html http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/08/me_talking_to_politico_... whereby voters don't necessarily know much about most issues and end up adopting issue positions held by parties they trust. See the link towards the end of that piece. In general, there's been a ton of political science work on how election outcomes are largely determined by non-issue factors, like economic conditions. An electorate that voted based primarily on issues should have stable preferences that don't swing wildly based on the state of the economy.