Who was your first vote when reaching the legal voting age? How has politics changed since then?

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Hello folks. The political landscape has changed a lot over the past few years. Who was your first presidential vote once you guys have turned the legal voting age (lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971)?

Mine was Biden in 2020, back when I thought he would be a good choice to get us out of a pandemic. In 2024, looking at how the political landscape has changed in the past four years (from not as woke back in the 2010s to full-on woke in the mid-2020s), and the strange, far-left Olympics opening ceremony, it has made me want to vote 3rd party this year.

Has anything happened in the political sphere between your first presidential election and now that has made you all shift party lines, or go independent?

Larniavc · Aug 7, 2024

I’ve flip flopped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems over the years.

Never voted Tory.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Larniavc said:
I’ve flip flopped from the Labour Party to the Lib Dems over the years.

Never voted Tory.

Nice. Who was your first candidate that you voted for, as in his/her name? How does he/she compare to the current crop of leaders in the UK?

Larniavc · Aug 7, 2024

It’s not really the leader we vote for in the UK it’s the Party but the leader of the Labour Party when I first voted was Tony Blair.

He was an able politician but leant too far right for me.

Belk · Aug 7, 2024

George HW Bush. I served under him in the army. Good man. To bad he got punished for doing the right thing about taxes.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Larniavc said:
It’s not really the leader we vote for in the UK it’s the Party but the leader of the Labour Party when I first voted was Tony Blair.

He was an able politician but leant too far right for me.

That is understandable. Hey, at least Tony Blair is not as far-right as Trump.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Belk said:
George HW Bush. I served under him in the army. Good man. To bad he got punished for doing the right thing about taxes.

Yeah, George HW Bush was okay, though long before my time. Hey, no president is perfect, and people can get punished for doing the right thing. What changed in politics over the past few decades that has impacted your current view on 2024's politics?

Also, thank you for your service. Which branch were you in?

Fantine · Aug 7, 2024

My first presidential vote was in 1972. McGovern vs Nixon.
McGovern's running mate, Eagleton, was axed after it was learned he had once had shock treatments for depression.

What a big nothing that would be today! Eagleton would be horrified.

He was replaced by Sargent Shriver.

McGovern had it in for us young 21 year old homeowners. He wanted to tax mortgage interest!

I am ashamed to have voted for Nixon-Agnew, both Crooks forced out of office.

Perhaps God is giving me the grace to tell you this so you will know that anyone can be duped and misled by criminal candidates. I had studied journalism, lived in NYC, had a father who was a top NYC official but I was duped by two crooks.

It can happen to the best of us, and redemption is possible.

God bless your decisions and forgive me my youthful error.

Yttrium · Aug 7, 2024

My first vote was in the 1980 election. I voted for John Anderson, who was running as an independent. Anderson ended up receiving 6.6% of the vote. I've been an independent centrist all along, usually trying to vote to get a balance between conservatives and liberals.

Unfortunately, Trump came along to wreck the balance by chasing away fiscal conservatives or converting them to his way of doing things, which has forced me to vote Democrat more than I would like.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Yttrium said:
My first vote was in the 1980 election. I voted for John Anderson, who was running as an independent. Anderson ended up receiving 6.6% of the vote. I've been an independent centrist all along, usually trying to vote to get a balance between conservatives and liberals.

Unfortunately, Trump came along to wreck the balance by chasing away fiscal conservatives or converting them to his way of doing things, which has forced me to vote Democrat more than I would like.

It is good that you have gone with independent. For myself, 2023-24 has made me want to go independent. The GOP would be much better if Trump peacefully stepped down, and then one could vote GOP again to get rid of the woke stuff.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Fantine said:
My first presidential vote was in 1972. McGovern vs Nixon.
McGovern's running mate, Eagleton, was axed after it was learned he had once had shock treatments for depression.

What a big nothing that would be today! Eagleton would be horrified.

He was replaced by Sargent Shriver.

McGovern had it in for us young 21 year old homeowners. He wanted to tax mortgage interest!

I am ashamed to have voted for Nixon-Agnew, both Crooks forced out of office.

Perhaps God is giving me the grace to tell you this so you will know that anyone can be duped and misled by criminal candidates. I had studied journalism, lived in NYC, had a father who was a top NYC official but I was duped by two crooks.

It can happen to the best of us, and redemption is possible.

God bless your decisions and forgive me my youthful error.

A lot of candidates are ungodly, and force regulations onto people. Glad that Nixon won in 1972, plus Nixon founded the EPA, so that is good.

Thank you for blessing my voting decisions. 3rd party is seeming more likely for me. The Olympics have almost sealed that deal, making me want to switch from the Democrats to the 3rd party.

Belk · Aug 7, 2024

AlexB23 said:
Yeah, George HW Bush was okay, though long before my time. Hey, no president is perfect, and people can get punished for doing the right thing. What changed in politics over the past few decades that has impacted your current view on 2024's politics?

Also, thank you for your service. Which branch were you in?

Politics has become much more cynics and much less cooperative. While there used to be division the two sides used to work together towards common goals. That seems to have gone by the wayside.

LovebirdsFlying · Aug 7, 2024

I voted for the first time, actually, when I was still 17 years old back in the early 1980s. It was a primary election, and the law was that you were eligible to vote in it if you were going to turn 18 before November of that year. I was. So I did.

I can't remember now how I voted, but I am inclined to vote third party if I don't like either of the two major party candidates. Personally I would like to move away from the either-or thinking of the two-party system, and just have people run as individuals on their own unique platforms.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

Belk said:
Politics has become much more cynics and much less cooperative. While there used to be division the two sides used to work together towers common goals. That seems to have gone by the wayside.

Agreed. That is so true. I have noticed this change starting when the Tea Party became popular in the 2010s, and when the far-left stuff became popular in the later part of the 2010s.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

LovebirdsFlying said:
I voted for the first time, actually, when I was still 17 years old back in the early 1980s. It was a primary election, and the law was that you were eligible to vote in it if you were going to turn 18 before November of that year. I was. So I did.

I can't remember now how I voted, but I am inclined to vote third party if I don't like either of the two major party candidates. Personally I would like to move away from the either-or thinking of the two-party system, and just have people run as individuals on their own unique platforms.

Yeah, candidates running individually on their own platforms would help. It is good that you think of voting for 3rd party. We need a different system where we can vote on ideologies, instead of parties.

If one wants to be pro-life, but also pro-environment, one can not vote for the Democrats (typically pro-choice), nor the Republicans (typically, pro-oil).

SavedByGrace3 · Aug 7, 2024

Republican since Goldwater. I was 10. I could not vote yet, but I did work for the campaign, handing out pamphlets and buttons. I think I got a couple of bucks a night. Pretty good as a kid in 1964. Yes, we did do dirty tricks. We would take Democrat pamphlets off of cars and replace them with Republican ones. Not much has changed. They are still calling us fascists, and we are still calling them communists. The media was not so skewed to the left back then. At least not so blatantly. New day, same old stuff.

BCP1928 · Aug 7, 2024

Goldwater, '64. My political views have not changed very much since then, and I might vote for him again if he was alive and running, but since then I have become a "Marxist" by default so I will vote for Harris.

PloverWing · Aug 7, 2024

My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter in 1980. I still like him, and his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize was well-deserved.

My mother was a Democrat and my father was a Republican, so I didn't start out with a bias toward one party or the other. In college, I took advantage of the college's library to look up the voting records of candidates who had served in Congress, and I found that the candidates who agreed with me most often on issues tended to be Democrats. Eventually, I registered as a Democrat so that I could vote in the primaries. (I live in a state that doesn't permit people to vote in a party's primary unless they're registered with that party.)

The biggest political changes I've seen since I first turned 18 have been: 1) There was a party realignment in the 1980s, in which many Southern Democrats joined the Republican party. 2) The Cold War ended. During the Cold War, a whole lot of foreign policy was viewed through the lens of how best to oppose Communism. Then all of a sudden that went away. 3) In the last couple of decades, there's been a real resistance to compromise in Congress, and I think it has crippled the ability of Congress to govern. Perhaps I should add: 4) Civil rights movements have been going on for my entire life, and indeed started before I was born. I don't know whether these movements count as change, exactly, because I see it as a steady, ongoing group of movements, but they've certainly changed society. I'm thinking of racial justice, feminism, gay rights, and transgender rights, roughly in that order chronologically.

Personally, I've become more liberal as I've gotten older. Working for human rights has become more important to me, as a consequence of my faith. I'm actually farther Left than many Democrats, now. But I've kept my Democratic Party registration, so that I can continue to vote in the primaries.

I'll add this: I'm liberal, but I'm also pragmatic. I want to see the leftists in Congress make grand, inspiring speeches, but then I want to see them sit down with centrists and conservatives and, um, whatever Trump is, and work out compromises to get legislation passed, so that everyone gets part of what they want. The loss of the American government's ability to do that troubles me more than any particular policy issue.

BCP1928 · Aug 7, 2024

BCP1928 said:
Goldwater, '64. My political views have not changed very much since then, and I might vote for him again if he was alive and running, but since then I have become a "Marxist" by default so I will vote for Harris.

And the reason I still like Goldwater is that he was in favor of things like homosexuals serving openly in the military, environmental protection, gay rights, abortion rights, adoption rights for same-sex couples, and the legalization of medicinal marijuana. I guess he would be a "Marxist" today, too.

AlexB23 · Aug 7, 2024

SavedByGrace3 said:
Republican since Goldwater. I was 10. I could not vote yet, but I did work for the campaign, handing out pamphlets and buttons. I think I got a couple of bucks a night. Pretty good as a kid in 1964. Yes, we did do dirty tricks. We would take Democrat pamphlets off of cars and replace them with Republican ones. Not much has changed. They are still calling us fascists, and we are still calling them communists. The media was not so skewed to the left back then. At least not so blatantly. New day, same old stuff.

Media became skewed since the 1990s or so, and even worse since social media in the 21st century, so times have not changed that much, but more polarization is happening now. Republicans and Democrats alike were classier years ago. Not so much anymore in the 2020s.

Who was your first vote when reaching the legal voting age? How has politics changed since then?

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