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Everyone has different priorities. Some prioritize borders, government assistance, money, or life.
Aside from these values, they're weighted differently. Like some believe that US border and government assistance are equivalent, like apples-to-oranges. But some believe that life and money are not equal, like apples-to-bridges.
The people that are single voters believe that life is valuable above all else. No amount of money should make it legal to "kill" another being (i.e. a baby).
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I would assume you're against rape. Let's say there's a person that runs for president and they completely match with your believes, the program they propose 99% matches your beliefs - basically the perfect candidate, almost. Their only downfall is that they believe in the legalization of rape. Would you still vote for them when you agree with 99% of what they said? This is the same form of single-issue voting, just the inverse of it.
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For example, choosing a pediatrician for your child? Sure, making sure the doctor is well-qualified and well-trained to give excellent medical care is super important for most people.

You are comparing competing benefits/costs, with a deal breaker. For example, "Yeah this pediatrician is affordable, in network, really caring with kids, and close by, but he's also been convicted of sexual abuse of a minor" Like, it doesn't matter how great all of the other things are about him, you just can't use that pediatrician. 
People feel similarly about politicians.
For Pro Life people: "Yeah this politician is great in ways X Y and Z, but he supports people murdering babies, so no can do."
I really don't know why someone who believed abortion was killing a human child, would be irrational for choosing not to support anyone who advocated it? >

Choosing not to support a Democrat because they support legalized abortion, is different than choosing to unconditionally support a Republican because they support abortion restrictions.
In other words, sure, voting for Donald Trump meant that he would add justices who wanted to overturn RVW. But supporting him despite the fact that he was repeatedly accused of sexual assault? That kind of single-issue voting is my hang-up. >

Well, they simply don't care about someone being accused about sexual assault nearly as much as the pro-life issue. Imagine a scenario where Republicans were somehow pro-life but also had a policy where they wanted to execute all Christians. Now, obviously, pretty much all the pro-life voters are going to vote Democrat despite their pro-choice platform. So... does that still make them single-issue voters by your standards? There are other policies that would make them change their vote. There just aren't any policies that candidates would realistically espouse that are more important to them than the pro-life issue.
Similarly, there are people who wouldn't vote for Republicans who are anti-LGBT (i.e. most Republicans) because... they are members of the LGBT community. It's difficult to say a trans person is doing anything wrong by refusing to vote for someone who literally wants to criminalize their existence given the actual platforms of both parties. If the Democrats had on their platform that they also wanted to shoot all left-handed men over the age of 50, then maybe those trans people would vote Republican. But there are issues so pressing it's hard to see why any others would possibly matter in light of those for some individuals. >

Many people who are pro-life belive that abortion is murder and that Democrats are, therefore, in favor of murdering hundreds of thousands of babies every year.
Whether or not you agree with that belief, put yourself in their shoes: if you believed that one party was for the wholesale slaughter of infants and the other was against it, would anything else matter? If you actually believe that one side is killing babies, the fiscal policies or character flaws of those on the other side are irrelevant.
To use your car example: if one car got 30 gallons to the mile (meaning it took 30 gallons of gas to drive one mile) or it had brakes that weren't just broken but irreparable, wouldn't either one of those single issues make you not buy it? 
When choosing a pediatrician, isn't location a single issue determinant for you? I mean, no matter how amazing the pediatrician is, you're not driving 2500 miles when your kid needs medical attention.
Or imagine choosing a desert when you're allergic to peanuts. Well, you might not like one option, but if the other kills you, you're going to go for the former. >

Another example would be a LGBTQ person and LGBTQ rights. Do you really expect them to vote for anyone that’s against rights for them. That politician could want to do everything else they want but being against LGBTQ rights means a vast majority of that demographic isn’t going to vote for that person. >

great example to show that it works for both sides. I hate it when people always use examples against a single side because that side is currently unpopular in modern western ideology; it breeds a false impression that "the other side is always unreasonable" and that "we don't have these problems". >

There is a major advantage to single-issue voting I haven’t seen mentioned yet. You can actually find people’s objective stances on them at nearly every election level. You can spent 30 seconds per candidate finding pro-life, pro-choice, anti-LGBT, etc. or you can spend hours per candidate weeding through generic “education good, vets good, crime bad” rhetoric to maybe figure out someone’s other policy stances.
People are busy, and not everyone follows politics. If you only have 2 hours of time to research and vote, it’s more prudent to vote for candidates that you agree with on your #1 issue than skip voting in races. >

Thanks for your comment. As I mentioned in my OP, I do agree that single-issue voting is superior to not voting at all. However, by your same logic, couldn't I also make the case that single-issue voting is an excuse not to concern yourself with other things that also matter? Also, I think it's important to consider that some of the easy-to-find sources that score candidates on these hot-button issues might be incentivized to exaggerate their policy views. E.g., maybe a candidate is generally pro-choice but voted against a so-called "late-term abortion" bill. That ambiguity could serve pro-choice and pro-life groups well, with enough advertising money. >

How broad must a voter's one view become before it no longer counts as "single-issue voting?" If someone's chief and only concern when choosing a candidate to vote for is "the economy" or "liberty" (however vague that may be), are they a single-issue voter? >

Thanks for your question. If I'm understanding you correctly, I think that an "issue" that is broadly-enough defined to where it would be a product of multiple individual policies seems better than an "issue" that is reducible to a single policy, law, vote, etc.
For example, if a voter says "the economy" is their only concern, then that is probably a composite of concerns, actually - inflation, unemployment, taxation, income inequality, etc.
Ultimately, I think it is a continuum, not a binary. I don't have a magic threshold beyond which I would say that a voter's concern is suddenly single-issue vs. multi-issue. >

If that's the case then there are no true single issues because they all relate to other issues. >

I don't think I agree. I'm pretty sure that some Republican voters in 2016 literally only voted for Donald Trump because he published the list of names of federal judges he would nominate to SCOTUS, and all of them were expected to be in favor of overturning RVW. >

Then they voted for exactly what they wanted, no? >

As an individual strategy, single issue voting is a terrible idea. But imagine a voting block of a few hundred impassioned voters who can swing a mayoral election one way or another. By focusing on a single issue, the group of voters can sway the outcome of the election, creating real change in an area that they care about. >

I'm interested in this thought experiment, and in the distinction between single-issue voting at individual vs. communal levels. My concern, though, is that it still maps onto the abortion example pretty clearly. For example, I imagine there were whole churches of people that insisted everyone vote for Trump unconditionally because of his policy promises re: abortion, despite his other flaws. >

And if their goal was to overturn abortion rights, those churches were pretty damn successful. Three of the five justices who voted to nullify Roe were appointed by Donald Trump. It's true that Trump had a disastrous impact on American politics as a whole, but an extreme anti-abortion advocate would see any candidate willing to overturn abortion as worthy of their support.
The reason you and I disagree with evangelical churches is not that their strategy was ineffective. It's that we disagree with their opinions on abortion and how much they value the issue over all others. >

Single-issue voting is often a bad idea but it can be rational in the right circumstances, and those circumstances can come up somewhat often.
For these examples, imagine something like a 'position preference distance', such that you would prefer a policy that is 10 units away from your most preferred policy twice as much as you would prefer one that is 20 units away.
Imagine the case where there are 5 issues on the ballot. Candidate 1 entirely agrees with your position on issues 1-4, but is 100 units away from your preference on issue 5.  Candidate 2 is 10 units away from you on issues 1-4, but entirely agrees with you on issue 5.  
Electing Candidate 1 based on issues 1-4 lands you 100 preference units away from what you actually want, while single-issue voting for Candidate 2 only lands you 40 units away.  It's rational to single-issue vote in a case like this.
This is not an uncommon situation in US politics specifically because candidates try very hard to find wedge issues that divide people and then focus policy decision on those wedges.  So while both sides are basically offering neoliberal economics with +-10% welfare, and both sides are basically committed to halting illegal immigration with +-10% funding to ICE, and etc., one side thinks that abortion is literally murder and the other side thinks that it is a crucial necessity for maintaining the right to bodily autonomy and self-determination.  Or one side thinks guns are the only thing keeping our murder rates way higher than the rest of the civilized world, and the other side thinks they're the only thing keeping us from sinking into endless tyranny. Or etc.  
When the two sides are close together on most issues but far apart on some wedge issues, and you are much closer to one side than the other on those wedge issues, it can make sense to single-issue vote on them. >


lecting Candidate 1 based on issues 1-4 lands you 100 preference units away from what you actually want, while single-issue voting for Candidate 2 only lands you 40 units away. It's rational to single-issue vote in a case like this.

I'm interested in this kind of thought experiment, but aren't you assuming that you weigh issues 1-5 equally? What if issue 1 was more important than issue 5? Or vice versa?
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When the two sides are close together on most issues but far apart on some wedge issues, and you are much closer to one side than the other on those wedge issues, it can make sense to single-issue vote on them.

Tell me if you disagree, but to me, I think it's also important to disentangle what a party aspires to vs. what a party is able to deliver. In other words, maybe party A wants to increase taxes on the highest income bracket by an absolute 10% margin, while party B wants to cut taxes by 20%. However, when party A comes to power, they're only able to increase the marginal rate by 3% because of the influence of their most conservative members, the filibuster, etc.. Comparing +10% to -20% seems much less equivocal than +3% vs. the status quo. Anyway maybe I'm off on a tangent. >


I'm interested in this kind of thought experiment, but aren't you assuming that you weigh issues 1-5 equally? What if issue 1 was more important than issue 5? Or vice versa?

I'm defining the abstract 'preference units' to be a constant value relating to your utility function (what you want and how much you want it), so here I've set up an example how much you care about the difference between you and the politician works out as I've explained.  In this system, if you cared about one issue more you'd increase the units measured for the same distant in policy space, basically, but I'm giving an example which I think can easily happen.

Tell me if you disagree, but to me, I think it's also important to disentangle what a party aspires to vs. what a party is able to deliver.

So, yes, I was originally going to write 2 examples instead of 1, but had to go back to work.  The second example would have been saying that you care about issues 1-5 equally, but issue 1 is very likely to actually be affected by who gets elected (eg abortion being completely flipped based on SC nominations o state assemblies) while the others are unlikely to change much no matter who wins (eg something like health insurance premiums or w/e).  
This is another case that I think supports my point, sometimes you want to single-issue vote for an issue that is very likely to be affected by the outcome of the election, even if that means your candidate disagrees with you on a bunch of static issues. >

The problem with this CMV (as it is with most CMV in regards to the american political system) is that you're focused on the symptoms and not the problem. Single issue voting is a symptom of a two party system, which is a symptom of FPTP elections. Fix the first two things, and politicians will be forced into a more nuanced, balanced position. 
Aside from that, I would never vote for someone because of a single issue, but I would definitely vote against someone because of a single issue (racism, misogyny, homophobia... transphobia...) basically any form of bigotry, because I feel that those issues taint an entire person's approach. They might be single words, but they extremely far-reaching issues with massive implications.