A significant part of why people's minds won't be changed by policies or platforms is that a large part of voter choice is self-identification with candidates. People literally vote against their own best interests based on self-identifying with a candidate's personality, image, mythology, etc. They do this even when that candidate's policies will be damaging to their own interests.

People in Europe, used to parliamentary democracy systems where party and platform and policy are more important than individual candidate personality, can see this more clearly. That our elections are mostly personal popularity contests is obvious to them. While in the USA, as you point out, people still pretend it has something to do with platform and policy and solving problems.

PS - it's really OK to have actual paragraphs with multiple sentences. In fact it would be easier to read that way.