I brought this up a while ago, but I'm seeing the phenomenon so strongly in the U.S. today that it's worth bringing up again.

The "Mirror of Erised" in Harry Potter was a mirror that showed you what you wanted to see. In politics, "Mirror of Desire" is the habit of a voter overlaying a real candidate with an image of what they want that candidate to be, often to the point of obscuring whoever the real person is. (I didn't originate the term, but forgot the name of the person who did. Sorry.)

It goes without saying that the less you know about a candidate, the easier this process is. For the Republicans, Fred Thompson is filling this role right now. For Democrats right now, it's usually Obama.

Where you run into problems is when more facts become known, and if they aren't the right facts, they are simply discarded in favor of the projected ideal. I suspect hungry conservatives will cut Thompson a lot of slack before they turn on him. Al Gore is another example of an ideal image almost completely overriding the real person. See the thread below.