Since most people have a largely pre-ordained bias to one side of the political persuasion or the other, that leaves only ~ 10% at most of the voting population in the "can be persuaded" camp.  Therefore, the billions of dollars spent on political propaganda and all the political bullshit rhetoric we have to listen to from candidates during campaign season is being spent to persuade only 10% or less of the voters to side one way or the other.

 

That's a huge inefficiency in the use of time, resources, energy, and dollars.  With such a high level of inefficiency it must therefore be worth some-one's apparent waste of that time, resource, energy, and dollars to spend it though.. otherwise just simple economics would negate the apparent waste.  

 

In any other endeavor, a persistant and continuous inefficiency would dictate the invention and/or development of a far more efficient process over time, but in the political arena that hasn't occurred... rather the reverse is true.  This fact makes it all the more mysterious as to why such inefficiency continues to become yet more and more inefficient.  

 

Basically, the resources expended to persuade no more than 10% of voters to one side or the other of an issue or candidate is an investment that serves those that are making the investment... and they wouldn't do it if they didn't expect an roi on that investment.  Inefficiency is therefore a secondary (or tertiary) issue, since the roi must be sufficient to make the investment worth their while.

 

It's not any different, I don't think, than the automobile company's that kept making SUV gas guzzlers and the like when the economic waste thereof was obvious and compelling... the roi on making SUV's overwhelmingly negated any waste and inefficiency involved.  What we need therefore in the political process is a competing entity... something akin to the Japanese automobiles that competed successfully, and overwhelmingly took over most of the U.S. automobile market... actually bringing the U.S. automobile mfg's to bankruptcy (or nearly so in Ford's case).   

 

I think therefore we need some outside influence inserted into the process in how to garner votes / persuade that 10% of voters with far better efficiencies than have been and continue to be the case in our political persuasion process.  Somebody's gaining by the huge inefficiency, and gaining big-time economically... and it ain't the average voter or the population at large, or the national interests.  Hmmmm... I wonder who's doing all the gaining then?