Well, this gets to the heart of the matter. But you can see how many people have completely uninformed world views (and then vote based on that). That's not the fault of gerrymandering (not to downplay the problem THAT creates). Add SCOTUS rulings on money in politics and avenues for reform shrink.
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I might ask why, in a free country, that should be the case?
IMO, and I’m definitely open to being wrong here, it’s a result of 20+ years of “us v them” culture war that discourages critical thinking and empathy
Once those extremes have sufficient clout, they can become active drivers, via a broken media system, of misinformation.
So what started out small, snowballed over 2-3 decades of misinformed voter causing extreme outcomes leading to more misinformed and more extremes.
Admittedly, I have no solution. So am not really adding much value.