Question: I often see the number of votes/answers/general interest in questions on Meta Stack Overflow to be much higher in number. There isn't much doubt that the questions here are a lot more interesting and prone to debate.

But shouldn't people spend time giving answers there rather than here?

I mean, that is what is more productive, right?

Answer: 
I don't share your view that there is more interest for questions here than on the main site. What I do see is this:

* There are more 'subject experts' here on MSO than on SO for specific tags. The population on SO is mostly interested in their own tags while people here are broader since it concerns the entire site, which everyone knows.
* There are far fewer posts on MSO. Thus they got more attention per question than questions on the main site. Also the 'hot meta questions' box will draw even more attention.
* Concerning the votes: opinions draw more votes in general since people want to have their opinion reflected. A question on SO itself is mostly judged on the correctness and has less 'emotional' way of voting.
There is no reputation linked with votes on meta stack overflow. Upvoting or downvoting here has no effect whatsoever on what we can do in the sites, which makes the voices in our heads lot more calmer about up or down voting content.

that, and votes here are more of an expression of our consent (or disconsent) with the content that we see, not if said content is of high quality or greatly researched.