I blame two primary causes. One is the general decline in education in the US, which has greatly accelerated since the "No Child Left Standing" laws were passed. Now schools teach only what is needed to pass those tests, because they will lose their funding if the students don't pass. (And the students still don't pass, amusingly enough.) Consequently, there is no history prior to World War II and little detail in what is left. Science is rudimentary and poorly connected. Correct writing is no longer taught because there are no essays on the tests. And still the kids fail the reading portion. My county has a higher than average number of residents with college degrees, and a higher than average income level, but almost all the high schools failed to meet the minimum reading comprehension levels required by the (weak in my opinion) federal standards.

And why is that? The second major cause: entertainment media, especially television but also motion pictures and video games. Young people no longer read for amusement or entertainment, unless you count graphic novels and manga. They have no exposure to great literary classics like Shakespeare or Melville, because those have been cast aside as "too difficult" and "too dated." They are replaced by cheap schlock materials that do nothing to stimulate the mind or imagination, and nothing to increase reading skills or vocabulary.

So. Elections are decided by voters who don't read and who therefore have no in-depth understanding of issues. Instead they have only the superficial viewpoints that are offered in talk radio or television news summaries, and they make emotional decisions driven by fears that those sources play upon.