Let us begin with two standard assumptions about voters. We will think about relaxing these in the second part of the course, but for now we will stick with them. Specifically, while they make mistakes, their mistakes are random, as opposed to systematically biased . In more technical terms, voters have rational expectations .
Voters care about nothing except the policies they get.
They aren't interested in personalities, entertainment, impressing their friends with their social conscience, etc. D. Neither of these require that voters be selfish. For example, one voter's ideal point might be a world where people are allowed to own any weapon up to and including a machine gun. Consider for example a wealthy parent. If spending on education is high, she sends her kids to public school.