SPOILER
Are you certain Shaw was still deluded at the end?
At the school where Shaw cast his ballot, we heard him tell Marco that he, too, was dreaming. Marco confirmed that Shaw had killed someone while they were held captive. And there was a cut to the scene outside their classroom while the two were conferring. That, I have always presumed, was when they planned their revolt against Manchurian's machinations.
Shaw did not step onto his mark (the star on the stage floor they kept cutting to). Instead, he convinced his mother, Eleanor, to join him on the stage, hugged her, checked up near the roof where Marco was hiding, and then turned to line up the shot so Marco could take the two of them out with the same shot.
This would align the 2004 story with the 1962 version, where Shaw takes out both his McCarthyesque vice presidential nominee father and his mother, then shoots himself.
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