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Two camps
Basically leftists-in-training that haven't read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.
Don't bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.
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.
Here are a few examples of what I've seen them do in the time I've been alive.
I agree with all of your points but believe there is one more.
Many vote for their party because that is what their family has always done. To them it is like rooting for their Football or Baseball team. They just want the win and feed off any news stories that support that view. No matter how much of complete failure a Republican President is (G.W.B. Comes to mind) their popularity never drops below 28% - 35%.
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.
What would be an example of this? It's not obvious to me that by simply voting in a manner that benefits "the rich" then also means it's against your own interests. When someone gains something it doesn't mean I must lose something in exchange.
It's hard to vote for one candidate that represents all your values or interests. Typically every candidate will be against your own interests in some manner. Preferential voting systems mostly curb this issue by allowing you to select many candidates in order of preference.
Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.
News is largely controlled by capitalists.
Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.
Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren't the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.
Various kinds of voter suppression.
From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that's specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.
Just being a representative "democracy" puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren't even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they'll do the things you want... then they get into office and you're back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you're back to square one.
Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you're most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it's in their interest to make sure employees don't talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.
Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn't focus their attention on capitalists.
Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.
The root of it is that we don't teach skepticism or critical thinking in public schools. Seriously.
Question authority. Question everything. But especially question authority. They rarely have your best interests in mind.
Something to consider is not everyone's interests are aligned. I'm not American so I can't comment on that specific area of the world, but that sort of question comes up a lot in my country and one of the biggest reasons is one party wants to make my hobbies/job harder and the other doesn't. So I don't think I'll vote for them. Now you, someone who doesn't have said job or hobbies, probably doesn't give a fuck about that. So you support said positions.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
--Lyndon B. Johnson
Manufactured consent
Bexause you have a two party system where both sides are corrupt
Can you really not see the difference between the parties?
Part of the issue is the system of voting is set up so that there can only ever be two parties. Dividing the country up into chunks and then having one winner in each chunk creates a situation where voting third party is a wasted vote. When there are only two options it's pretty hard to vote for your interests.
In the 90s when New Zealand changed to MMP to led to a proliferation of new parties getting into parliament and the people involved were much much less often old white males. It changed the dynamic completely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_New_Zealand
Any rational person can see the difference, doesn't mean he's wrong. Just because democrats are way better than republicans doesn't mean they are GOOD. Both parties attract corrupt greedy powermongers. MAGA / GOP just gets the lion's share.
Kind of an indirect answer, but I've heard people state that they vote against their own personal beliefs because they think that there needs to be a balance between "good and bad". Obviously, this is complete bullshit. Even if there should be a "balance", we already have enough problems as is, we don't need the government making it worse.
Let’s say I’m an American male. I like football. I like the NY Jets, because I also like to suffer.
I don’t have to read the news, or go to news websites, or listen to news radio, to hear about my Jets. I don’t have to risk accidentally learning about what’s going on in the world watching the 6 o’clock news every evening when all I really want to know is the latest saddening Jets news.
I can listen to podcasts that tell me about jets players health, fantasy picks, gossip, the latest games, and betting strategy. In the offseason my podcasts don’t go off air. I can go to websites where algorithms that have already identified me as a Jets fan bury any news about politics or social issues under a mountain of roster updates and advertisements for beer (because Jets fans need it).
Then it comes time to vote. These democrats all seem to talk about stuff I don’t care about or understand. This Trump guy says he will do stuff. I hate the way things are, but I don’t know why they are that way. Corporate monopolies? Antitrust? Voter suppression? All that shit got buried under Aaron Roger’s passing stats. And Trump wasn’t all that bad when he was president. Certainly better than I feel now, and while I’ll pore over individual player stats to take matchups into account when I set my fantasy football roster I’m not gonna go pore over statistics on the economy or anything. That shit is complicated and boring, and football stats are definitely not. So I never have to risk remembering that Trump was pretty fucking bad.
On Election Day I vote for the guy who says he’ll do stuff, and it’s easy to do it, and it’ll be fast, and I’ll like the outcome. I won’t vote for the party that gave up 30 years ago and whose message is basically “come on guys we’re trying really hard but this governing thing is impossible!”
That’s how, basically. That and bigots.
Tl;dr: Stupid
One's "own best interest" can take a lot of different forms. Especially when the number and variety of plausible candidates are finite. Your preferred candidate for a given office will rarely line up perfectly with your own values. There's a compromise there.
If I vote for my own finances, it may come at the cost of my morals. It I vote for my own moral interest, it may cost me more. If I vote for my own power, it may cost someone else their freedoms. How heavily do I weight my own interests against those of a wider society? Political identities and philosophies are complicated, and can't necessarily be reduced to a single binary choice that is "best" in every scenario.
Put simply: They’re being lied to. Consistently and perniciously.
The lie is that their vote is going to benefit them somehow. Or that it’s going to hurt someone else exclusively. And, sometimes, it’s both—that it’ll hurt someone else, while bringing a benefit.
In all three cases, the real truth—that they themselves will still suffer—is neatly hidden away.
Propaganda. Lack of education. There's a reason they want to defund public schools. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. :)