That's because people have caricatures of each other which are wildly inaccurate.

If you talked to people you would understand that what they optimize for is not really related to the caricatures of them, its not the opposite of what "your side" cares about just completely different.

When it is obvious that all the news comes from New York City and Los Angeles, and the world resyndicates that, while a large swath of America that actually matters cares about different things, it is easy to tell why the models fail.

You would have bet the farm on the undervalued bet on the prediction markets.