It’s extremely difficult to model what people actually want. Stated policy preferences change dramatically when you go from the general to the specific and ask people to make specific trade-offs. For example:
https://reason.com/2014/07/10/millennials-prefer-small-gover...> At first glance millennials appear to prefer a "larger government providing more services" (54%) over a "smaller government providing few services" (43%). However, once tax rates are mentioned support for large government flips. Instead 57 percent favor "smaller government, providing fewer services, with low taxes" and 41 percent want "larger government providing more services, with high taxes." We also find that the race/ethnicity gap on the size of government disappears among Hispanic, Asian, and white millennials once tax rates are explicit.
Most policy polls are useless, because they don’t ask voters what they’d be willing to pay or give up in another area for that particular policy. For example, support for universal healthcare plummets when you mention taxes and losing private insurance:
> But the more revealing part of the survey, I think, comes from the questions focused on the costs of single payer, all of which caused support for Medicare for All to drop below 40 percent. Told that it would eliminate private health insurance and require people to pay more in taxes, for example, support fell to 37 percent. Told that it would cause some medical treatments and tests to be delayed, support dropped even further, to 26 percent.
It’s also the case that in a Republican form of government, politicians are specifically charged with implementing specific policies that reflect the public’s hierarchy of preferences. Poll after poll shows the economy as the dominant concern of most voters. (Apart from this year when covid because a main concern.) People might, in the abstract say they favor taxing the wealthy and corporations more heavily. But when Election Day rolls around, they reward politicians (especially at the state and local level) who convinced a big corporation to move to their area and punish politicians who caused corporations to leave.