>In your opinion, are most people really a combination of the two? Do most people agree with about 1/2 to 2/3rd of their party's positions and the rest they actually agree with the other party? That is typically the case here I think. We tend to lean toward one party over another because the majority of our views coincide with one party but not every single one and sometimes we disagree VERY STRONGLY with one or two policies of the other party.

That's the large part of the problem with the parties. You may agree 2/3 with one; you help it get elected, and then, voila, they end up forgetting about half of their promises - and invariably, that half was in the part you liked. So your chances of agreeing with any given policy of any government you helped elect are about 1/6. Now with a government of The Other Party (first I wrote "another", but then remembered that There Can Be Only Two), you already agree with them only 1/3, but all of that will be in the part they will forget, so you get about 0/6.