Why people will vote against their own interests--

[rrneck]

2. From the article...

Frank Marlowe, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, argued that what looks like spiteful behavior in the real world may really be a matter of image-making. He and his colleagues have used the ultimatum and similar games to study barter and exchange in a broad cross-section of non-Western cultures, including foragers, pastoralists and farmers. They found that no matter how hardscrabble the life or how much the players obviously could have used even a sliver of a potential award, game participants would reject a partner’s stingy offer indignantly, an apparent act of spite that left both empty-handed — at least for the moment.

In the context of politics I suppose the question would be, "What is being offered?" If respect is the currency of exchange condescendingly telling people how stupid they are would surely draw a spiteful response.