Same. While I will listen to policy, I spend most of my time listening to how a candidate acts, forming a character assessment, and voting based on that. At the end of the day, I find I want somebody who embodies what I want to see in a person and/or leader more than somebody who is good at saying all the right things.

Unfortunately, as a left-leaning American in (what I feel is) the most chaotic, stupid, and possibly divided, democratic political system to somehow manage to stay together (so far!) in the modern, western, world, a character assessment of a candidate often means checking how often they repeat directly harmful rhetoric, and lies, about minority groups, when platforming their politics.

Needless to say, most of the time, I’m voting a straight ticket in one specific direction, to avoid putting people into office who believe that, say, they can see Russia from their house, women’s bodies have “ways to shut it [rape] down”, or their grandparents were “good at nuclear”, and less so who has better policy. At least there is a correlation between lying, and having bad/no policy, seems a bit correlated still.