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| Group identification is a very curious phenomenon.
On your last point, I've heard that during the 2004 (?) elections, a significant percentage of Bush voters assumed he had all kinds of progressive and environmental plans, like signing the Kyoto treaty. While this would have been a rather good idea for the environment, and it was a hugely popular policy among the population at the time, Bush had never indicated a desire to do so, nor did he touch on it, ever. It's just something people wanted to believe, I suppose, or they couldn't fathom their candidate not to favour this thing.
As for elections and politics: the politicians and media have a lot to gain from pretending the different parties are very different, when in fact, they are not. Especially in the first past the post and presidential voting systems, it appears that parties are strongly driven to approach each other on most core issues, while making a big fuss about frivolous difference. Once a voter is decided (and in the process not confused about the real issues too much), he will confirmation bias his way into thinking that all these frivolous things that the newspaper dredges up means that his candidate is the saviour of the planet, while the opponent will destroy all that is good. And this while their platforms are probably almost identical.
Highlighting the differences, no matter how small, makes sense for media outlets. People buy their products because they want to figure out how to vote. "Party X and Y agree on yet another big thing - alternate solutions have no chance of winning this election" is a story you can only run so many times.
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