Do You Know How Your Parents Vote or Voted

None of the adults I grew up around ever voted. Not once. They did criticise the politicians, but it did not seem to matter which ones they were.

interesting

I'm Boston Irish.

When I was a kid, my family voted the straight Democratic ticket. The
real election was the Democratic primary. In that, my family tended to
vote for whoever wasn't Italian. They had a decidedly non-PC way of
expressing that.

I don't vote that way.

My parents never joined the Republican party but I don't think they ever voted for anything else.

For the first 20 years or so I tended to vote for Republicans because they represented smaller government. Now they represent social conservatism and as big a government as the Dems (just with a different focus). I vote cross party with a preference to third party candidates when I'm not feeling a mandate to vote against someone particular in either party.

i tend to vote the candidate, i've voted for every party around (except the bloc quebecois as they are only in quebec), even voting for the communist party one year because no one else impressed me much and the university kid running was the best speaker at the one debate was able to attend

I always knew how my father voted as he was adamantly and very vocally anti-liberal at every level of government from town councillor to President of the United States- he always voted Republican and seemed to LOVE voting Republican no matter who was running on the ticket. I always found that pretty amusing; how he could convince himself that ANY Republican candidate was head and shoulders above ANY Democratic candidate and that every Democratic candidate was almost totally and innately evil.
We actually had that discussion once - I asked him if he really believed Bill Clinton was an evil man - he said he did.
And you wouldn't even want to get him started on Hilary.

My mom is much more an issue voter, so she voted her conscience. She never expressed hatred for any member of any party. And in fact, just a week or two ago we were talking about the oil spill and she said, 'I didn't vote for Mr. Obama, but I'm very disappointed with the way people are so eager to blame him for this oil spill mess. It's not his fault. I think he's doing the best he can and people should respect his efforts, even if they didn't see fit to vote for him'.

She's so cute and reasonable.

I always vote my conscience and that seems to lead me to vote for Democrats. The way my parents (or anyone else) votes or tended to vote has no effect on how I vote.

My family has been very political for several generations. My parents were bringing is to civil rights rallies before I was able to walk. Not only do I know who my parents are voting for (we discuss it often), my parents are working on Democratic campaigns.

It is true that I strongly support the Democratic party, as my family did. But there are far more reasons to vote for Democrats.

We are an interracial bilingual family... the Republicans have done everything in their power to piss off my family (and this doesn't even count their screwing up the wars and the economy).

I'll put it this way. I mentioned to an aunt that I was thinking of registering Democrat so I could vote against Ted Kennedy in the primary. She told me I could do whatever I wanted, but don't ever let anybody in this family find out about it. 'Nuff said?

I wavered from Democrat to Republican to Democrat over the years, until I regretted my vote for Reagan. From that point on, I have not voted Republican. The new Republican party scares me.

The Democrats don't impress me overly much. But I love Al Franken.

I voted for a Democrat for state representative somewhere around 1996. I could justify it to the family, but hope the subject never comes up.

this is something that amazes me, for the most part outside of provincial politics (think state) and federal politics, there's little knowledge, at least in my experience, of the political leanings of local politicians, i only know our former mayor is a liberal because he wants to run for the party in the next election, before that he could have been anything, it's not something that is brought up as far as i'm aware

My parents have always been open about their voting - more so as they age. They campaigned for Deval Patrick and their lesbian rep. They are very liberal, but both have large numbers of conservatives in their families (or did). My siblings and I are also very liberal.

My father was vociferously political in that he believed the people shaped their community and that if the liberals got in power it'd be the end of his world as he knew it so he read every newspaper right down to the local called the Sentinel which always did a spread on each candidate and their stances on the issues .
He even voted for members of the local school board -it was part of what he considered being a good citizen and member of the community.

It seems to me that political leanings don't mean much in local elections. Local officials are going to be dealing with local issues.... this is one place I don't much care about party affiliation. On the other hand, I live in Cambridge (affectionately referred to as the People's Republic of Cambridge), I am pretty sure there are no Republicans in local office here.

You're right, but in federal and most state legislatures, a party majority confers advantages for whatever ideology, regardless of the quality of the individual office holder. It's a big hurdle for the other candidate to clear.

Mother aways voted what father did: conservative (= 'Christian Democratic Union').

Though father wasn't a member of that party, he was sent by them as an "expert citizen" in some town, county and regional committees. (And he always started his speeches there with "I'm not a member of the ....")

I'm the daughter a Boston irish mother who was a strong Republican and a California irish father who was a liberal. I watched the army mc carthy hearings & kefauver hearings with my mother who was very enthusiastic. Father was at work, or that would have been a "heated" room.

I've been a long time registered democrat but once considered voting for (who was it? Anderson, I think). Didn't though. At one point recently I got disgusted with the dems and changed to Independent, but then I couldn't vote in the dem primary so I switched back. I voted for a green instead of a dem once, but I forget who that was, someone in a CA election. I tend to disagree with most politicians except a couple of them from California that I know (I'd name them, but I don't want to tarnish them with my osso-ness), and a few others. Am presently tearing my hair about Obama (I voted for him), but I'm unusually sternly anti-many-of-our-wars or similar actions.

As to parties, I tend to vote party, re "the company they keep", just like one figures out what the source of blast cells is if they show up in a hemotology slide..
but this doesn't always do a lot of good as a lot of the company of the different parties is equally problematic in one way or another.

My folks grew up during the depression, so they were strong Democrats. For the last 20 years or so, I've been registered as an unafilliated , but mostly go for the Dems.

embarrassing typo, that's hematology..