That's the basic message of this Politico piece, which explores why voters consistently provide pollsters with conflicting, contradictory or just plain silly responses: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73947.html Some analysts provide reasonable explanations. Of course, this one is a nice way of saying "they're ignorant": Mary Matalin provides a better explanation of the contradictory feelings about Obamacare: The good news: since ignorance and opinion volatility crosses party lines, it tends to cancel each other out, and give more weight to those issues where opinions are the most stable: And then, of course, there's the fact that, ignorant or not, the voters hold the power, so politicians just have to deal with it: That's not entirely true: You "fight the market" by trying to educate voters as best you can so they'll see it your way. But in the end, if a majority of voters think Obama is a Muslim or Santorum wants to make birth control illegal, and those "facts" influence how they vote, there's not much politicians can do about it.