[bombcar]

And most of those boil down to “voting for X decreases the things I care about increases the things I don’t care about; therefore those who care about those things are voting insane.”

It’s inherently an argument that democracy does not work.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Voting "insane" is very different from voting "selfish".

Clearly, voters are not casting votes based on objective measurements of the things that some candidates believe are important to them (e.g. household income, life expectancy, health care quality etc).

But that means either that they are voting based on other issues that they consider important, or they are not voting based on likely outcomes of a candidate's policy preferences at all.

It's not trivial to differentiate these two (and of course, there may even be a mixture of all 2, or even all 3, reasons to vote).

[prewett]

In a republic, where you vote for people to represent you, not to implement your wishes, voting for a candidate you believe will make "good" decisions (even if you disagree with some of them), is actually how the system was supposed to behave. "Good" might mean "the things I want / agree with", but it might also mean "benefits the public interest, even if I don't want / disagree with it".

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What do you consider "representing me" to mean?

And sure, people may vote for a candidate (implicitly, for a policy) that benefits society as a whole even if it negatively impacts them. It does stretch credibility, however, to try to make the case this is what is happening when people earning median incomes or below vote for candidates who cut taxes on the wealthiest in a society, as well as reducing the share of GDP going to labor, and claiming "well, those folks just think this candidate is doing a good job on <cultural issue>". I'm not suggesting it is impossible that this happens sometimes, but across the entirety of working class Republican voters (for example) ... I find it hard to believe.