When you first registered to vote, how did you choose which party to be affiliated with?

I registered at age 18 – the day after my birthday. This would have been around 1972. I registered as a Democrat. My whole family (middle-class Jews in suburbia), thought that Nixon was an asshole and that the war in Viet Nam was wrong. We were all pro-integration and equal rights for all races.

So it was a no-brainer to register as a democrat.

At one point in my life I registered as an independent to be able to vote in the republican primary (independents could choose which primary ballot) in order to vote for the extremist so that the democrat would have a better chance of winning. It worked.

When I registered, both of my parents were unaffiliated, though my mom had been a Republican in the past. I registered as a Democrat because I’m interested in voting in Democratic primaries, and because the Democrats are the closest to my own political leanings. They are not a perfect match by any means, but they much more closely match my values than the Republicans do (as the Republican Party continues to move to the right). I’m currently registered as a Democrat, but I have been thinking of going unaffiliated, especially after this past election—the actions of the Democratic Party in this last election disgusted me a bit.

I registered as Independent. In federal elections, I don’t want to be inundated with campaign mail and in small local elections, I vote by person, not party, as there is much less party emphasis.

I’d been conditioned by an entire childhood of northeastern liberalism. I didn’t think twice about registering as a Democrat and casting my first presidential vote for Jimmy Carter.

I registered Democrat. In the South, the term yellowdog Democrat really meant something. I doubt it still does.

Registered independent, I dislike the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party.

I haven’t picked a party yet. I’m neutral. I do think that Elisabeth May would Ideally be my Prime minister. She’s the leader and only elected MP member of Parliament of the Canadian Green Party.

Democrat. I’d vote for a piece of maggot infested road kill, before I’d vote for a damned money grubbing Republican. Any questions? On edit: an organ grinders monkey would be preferable, as well.

Great question, OP (Opie?)!

I first registered in 1968 when I was 21. That was the minimum voting age back then. I think the primary argument for lowering the age to 18 afterwards was, if we were being forced to fight in a war when we were 18, then we sure as hell should be able to vote on whether our nation wages that or any future wars.

My parents were both Democrats and we all opposed the Vietnam War.

However, the Democratic administration then was the primary purveyor of that war. I consequently voted for the Peace & Freedom candidate, Eugene McCarthy. My parents had no problem with that.

As with @Love_my_doggie I registered democrat way back then and my first vote went to Jimmie Carter. My parents were democrat so that’s why I registered as a democrat.

I registered as independent when I first registered to vote, because I wasn’t sure about associating with a party. That was about two years before Obama was inaugurated for a second term. (Yep, I’m a young’un.) My parents were, I think, still registered as Republican at that point, but for years they had considered themselves Democratic-leaning, nonpartisan voters (they were more likely to pick the Democratic candidate, but that wasn’t a given. It depended on the candidates.) I don’t think this had much of an effect on me—actually, both of them urged me to register for a party so I could vote in Presidential primaries.

As this last Presidential election campaign began to gain momentum, I was bothered by the rhetoric of a certain Republican candidate. I wanted to be part of the statistic that was pushed away by that kind of behavior/demeanor/thinking, so I registered as a Democrat. So did my parents and my sister. (That was when we thought more of the country agreed with us than it turned out did.)

It wasn’t much of a leap. If I had registered for a party from the beginning, it would have been Democrat. I knew I agreed with more of their positions than I disagreed, and I agreed with more of their positions than any other party. I’ve since been told by someone in my life that “no one would mistake you for anything but liberal,” I guess for better or worse, depending on the views of whoever’s reading this.

I knew I had a steep learning curve ahead of me when it came to politics, but these last few years have really shown me just how steep it is. I’ve been trying to climb my way up ever since.

My parents were hard core conservative Republicans, and I never agreed with them politically. It’s interesting to see how many democrats agreed with their parents.

Republican, same as any sane person in America.

@SergeantQueen

That’s a strong statement. But more than half of the country agrees with the progressive democrats (non establishment) on these issues:

Environmental protections
Money out of politics
Living wage
Medicare for all
Stopping the wars (non-interventionist)
Legalizing marijuana
Gay rights
Reasonable gun control
Separation of church and state

On the other hand, many republicans support these issues:

• Deregulating environmental protections
• Belief that climate change doesn’t exist, despite overwhelming evidence
• Unregulated capitalism, which led to the 2008 recession
• Wage slavery
• For-profit healthcare
• War on drugs (because prohibition on alcohol worked, right?)
• Teaching the Bible in schools (but only the Christian bible!)

My parents were Dems and I just learned that Dems are for middle class and poor people (which, we were middle class), and for the environment and stuff like that. This was during the era of Ronnie Reagan and trickle down economics and Anita Bryant who was for censoring song lyrics and all that crap. Trickle down wasn’t trickling down so registering Democratic was the logical choice.

I have always leaned to the left politically, so registering Democrat seemed the natural thing to do.

Democrat. I’ve always voted Democrat. My grandfather was Democrat since the days of FDR. My parents aren’t all that politically inclined though.

And yes, I do vote for the party, because I take the time to read and understand the parties platforms. One party pushes a platform and policies that I am mostly in agreement with. The other pushes a platform and policies that I mostly find repugnant.

Democrat as were my parents but not because they were. And I started voting when the age was 21. Anyone else remember “Old nough to fight, old enough to vote?”