A strategy doesn't have to work every time to be good. "Dumb people" can and do find people smarter than themselves and put in an effort to copy them. Usually that is a good idea - better than trying to go it alone, any way.
That is a slightly different situation though, isn't it? The US presidential elections are a choice between 2 options, usually both bad. The results suggest all 3 candidates in the last 2 US elections are borderline unelectable and both parties are engaged in a bizarre war to find the worst candidate people will vote for.
Which is not at all the same as the fairly typical group dynamics.