It's worse than that. Practically every policy is unpopular. Popular policies have already been passed.
To win you have to assemble a coalition of people for whom everyone else's unpopular opinion is tolerable. They all agree to trade votes. Each vote is popular only with a minority, but others will vote because they are neutral and it advances their agenda.
This favors the status quo, where the largest minority can most easily assemble a coalition. This is good in the abstract, but tends to lead to continued marginalization of anybody who can't assemble a coalition.
It also means that even broadly popular policies can be blocked by an influential minority who favors no change. There are usually other systemic factors which put a thumb on the scale in favor of yh status quo, such as requiring multiple bodies to all vote in favor. It takes only one body to prevent even popular changes.
You'd think that eventually people would tire of that gridlock, and they do. So sometimes things get passed anyway -- usually popular ones. What remains is policies that have wide support but not a majority, and can languish until rare conjunctions of events enable passage.
To win you have to assemble a coalition of people for whom everyone else's unpopular opinion is tolerable. They all agree to trade votes. Each vote is popular only with a minority, but others will vote because they are neutral and it advances their agenda.
This favors the status quo, where the largest minority can most easily assemble a coalition. This is good in the abstract, but tends to lead to continued marginalization of anybody who can't assemble a coalition.
It also means that even broadly popular policies can be blocked by an influential minority who favors no change. There are usually other systemic factors which put a thumb on the scale in favor of yh status quo, such as requiring multiple bodies to all vote in favor. It takes only one body to prevent even popular changes.
You'd think that eventually people would tire of that gridlock, and they do. So sometimes things get passed anyway -- usually popular ones. What remains is policies that have wide support but not a majority, and can languish until rare conjunctions of events enable passage.