Bryan Caplan on the Myth of the Rational Voter
EconTalk
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The Importance of Political Competition
If it were really true that voters only cared about results and they threw politicians out if the results were bad, then I think there's a good reason to be optimistic about political competition. However, suppose that voters also care a lot about policies. Do you mean policies rather than personal? Yes, not the results. They want a politician who favors prohibition of drugs. That is at least partly the basis on which they evaluate them. But if there's a politician who gets the murder rate down while legalizing drugs, it is likely that voters are going to throw him out because they don't like the policy.
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