Why do people often vote against their own interests?

BBC NEWS: Why do people often vote against their own interests?

Excerpt (but there's more):

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.
But that would be a mistake.


If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.