Often when I see someone accusing people of voting against their own interests, it’s pretty clear that the person making the accusation has not taken the time to understand the values others are basing their choice on.
If I could rob a person and be confident that I would never be caught and punished for doing so, am I acting against my own self interest if I chose not to rob them because it goes against my moral code? No, of course not. But based on the way some people talk about voting against ones self interest, you might think I just cheated myself out of free money. Is it possible that a person might “vote against their own interests” because of a misinformed view? of course, but you’ll never understand a person’s motivations by chosing to paint them with broad strokes based on your prejudices instead of getting to know them individually and trying to understand what it is they truly value.

This is a complex question, but up front first and foremost in any Capitalist country, voting will always benefit the rich, even FDR style Social Democracy came about as concessions to prevent revolution in the context of a decimated working class and a rising USSR.

People, generally, vote along their class interests, but these are handled in a different manner depending on which country you are in. Using the US as an example, the DNC caters to social progressivism, while the GOP caters to social conservativism. On foreign policy, the GOP and DNC are near identical, and when it comes to domestic economic policy, the DNC caters slightly more to urban voters while the GOP caters to rural voters.

This is all, however, in the context of parties that function as businesses that sell policy to Capitalists. Both parties serve Capital, because Capital is what holds real power. It holds power over the media, the state, everything.

The answer to how to fix this is getting workers to organize. When workers organize, they raise their social and class awareness and can accomplish far more than atomized individuals can.

Do we actually vote to benefit the rich?

Many vote for leaders that openly cater to the rich, but I don’t know that we actually consciously vote to deliberately help the rich.

Those elected people are the ones telling everyone that the rich are the job creators. They used to feed us the farce that trickle-down was viable, they don’t even bother with the lie anymore. The rich are just squatters on wealth. They get that wealth by consolidating businesses, hoarding assets like real estate, creating artificial scarcity, enshittifying everything, and squeezing labor for more productivity while expending massive effort to minimize overall compensation.

And they own the media. All of it. Even the “liberal” media is mealy at best about taxing wealth or anything critical of the uber-wealthy, anything right of center is openly against tax, particularly of anyone with wealth, making the wealthy the “victims” of the left’s ideas while the wealthy are just parasites victimizing us all.

All that aside, the real crux of the issue is identity politics. Being a sycophant of the rich is no longer any different than being a evangelical supply-side Jesus CINO, pro-gun, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-environmental regs, blah blah and all the rest of the mulish conservative BS.

They don’t actually care if we cater to the rich. They care that their team says we should bend over and give the rich everything. Just like their team says school shootings are an acceptable price for having your own personal arsenal, or spreading a potentially deadly disease is better than being inconvenienced by closed restaurants.

Obstinate tribalism has gleefully supplanted critical thought.

The rich are clever and very well coordinated

People get more upset about a bad friend than a real enemy.

Two camps

1. They don’t know any better.

Basically leftists-in-training that haven’t read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.

2. People voting and believing political opinions with their gut instinct

Don’t bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.

They get manipulated about and distracted by certain issues. The people who want power know this and exploit topics such as guns, abortion, fear of crime, racism/nationalism, sexism, economic issues and taxes. Plenty of people vote republican because they have been convinced that Democrats will take their guns, allow in too many immigrants (with the implicit idea that immigrants are bad somehow), be worse on the economy, lower taxes, let criminals get off easy, reduce the influence of Christianity, and so forth.

There’s also the decades of propaganda about socialism and communism, and against social safety nets as well as government and anything run by the government vs a private entity. So basically, because they’re not very aware or well informed and all themselves to be convinced by propaganda.

Because our brains are not wired for the modern complex world. Most decisions we make, we make thanks to heuristics that are heavily exploited by other people.

They believe it will benefit them one day.

Since I didn’t see it listed yet, fear of change.

Some folks are just fearful of change.

Rarely is a change proposal black and white. We can show you good data to support the change. We can look at it from a reputable source. We can look at how the change affected others. We can agree it’s most likely a good change.

But sometimes we fear it.

What if we’re wrong?

Here are a few examples of what I’ve seen them do in the time I’ve been alive.

• Lowering the amount of educated people by various means such as cutting (on not properly increasing) funding, restricting access to it,…
• Limiting access to (somewhat) correct information by buying up news media outlets, severely influencing social media, telling people that their “alternative media” is the only way to get correct information, and so much more
• Actively pitting groups of people against each other, black vs white, immigrants vs citizens, women vs men,…

One reason I have not read yet: scapegoating. In my country, back in the early 2000s it was the “terrorists” who made it possible to enforce a few unpopular and unconstitutional policies. Nowadays, it is the “immigrants” who take our jobs (we have a job shortage), housing (which was sold off to investors) and health care (which was sold off to investors). Point to a group that cannot defend itself and people will vote in your favor.