Why would anyone vote for the guy?
Hardline Republicans, obviously they vote for hardline Republican reasons. People in the centre? They bought Moderate Mitt at the first debate. Everyone knows he's a flip-flopper, he must just have been kidding about those hardline right-wing positions he spouted earlier on (if they heard about them at all).
But that's not why they're voting for him, that's just why they can vote for him. The reason why they're voting for him is that Obama didn't fix all the stuff he said he'd fix. It's not really fair - financial crises are generally very painful, and hard and difficult to get out of, and let's not get into the culpability of the House - but you have a lot of the electorate thinking, well that didn't work, we need to try something else.
(Neither man has a viable plan to reduce the deficit. But while that gets some people on the Right going, I don't think most people care very much.)
I will also say, I think Romney has recently hit on a genuine criticism of Obama, and possibly one that's getting some traction: he isn't touting much of an agenda for a second term. I really don't know what he wants to achieve, beyond repealing the Bush tax cuts for people richer than I am. I think Romney's actually getting traction with the notion that he's the one in this race with a plan for the future. (Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.)
Concerning the behaviour of people in poverty, I've recently been reading a very interesting book, Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo. It's about the very poor, people in India or sub-Saharan Africa or such like trying to live on less than a dollar a day. It makes for a very compelling read because, in contrast to so much debate on foreign aid and charity and such, the authors actually spent a great deal of time in the field, running experiments to find out how they really live and what really works (and doesn't) in improving their lives.
Key point for this discussion: yes, if your life is so grindingly miserable and hopeless, finding something that makes it just a little more pleasant is not a luxury. People will, for instance, eschew some calories (even if malnourished already) in favour of a diet that actually tastes good. On that note, I was recently contacted by Medicins sans Frontieres, looking for financial support to distribute a product called Plumpy-Nut. It's peanut butter-based (presumably to appeal to Americans), with added micronutrients (something woefully deficient in even calorically adequate diets in poverty-stricken areas, and something that grain-based food aid doesn't help). Looks like it is very well designed both to target the problem of malnutrition (especially in children), and to work with the lifestyle of the people it's intended to help. (I saw an article on CNN about it a few days later, in this case being distributed by UNICEF. Again, I was perhaps most impressed with the effort to match distribution to conditions on the ground.)