You see another funny effect like this in voting. A rough list of voting one can do, in order of likelihood of it affecting anything in the real world, most-to

You see another funny effect like this in voting. A rough list of voting one can do, in order of likelihood of it affecting anything in the real world, most-to-least: 1. Voting in local party elections/primaries/et c. 2. Voting in local elections. 3. Voting in state-level party primaries. 4. Voting in state-level elections. 5. Voting in national-level primaries (that is, conducted at the state level but for national offices) 6. Voting in national elections. 7. (Largely as an effect of how US Presidential elections work) Voting for president, specifically. Note that this is damn near perfectly the inverse of participation rates in and media attention given to these activities, and that people will shit all over you for failing to do #7 while they themselves mostly ignore the lower numbers. Meanwhile an hour a year working with/for your preferred local party may very well be more effective than all of that voting. But "you didn't vote for President, so you don't get to complain and are a bad citizen". Horse-shit.