> being mere puppets is a worse overly-reductive explanation than that the majority are just bad people

I don't think the majority are bad people. I've only met a few people that I'd call "bad" who just want harm to come to others.

I think the majority of people are basically puppets when it comes to voting. Some states even have ballots that let you check a single "democrat" or "republican" box and will cast all your votes for that party for each office in the running. You don't even need to think. Just check the elephant or the donkey.

Joe Roegan has an insane amount of listeners and they're mostly going to vote across the lines he appears to like (and they did)

In the past, the news channel with the most viewers held that influence, which is why ad spend has been such a good predictor for election sucess.