What is the first election you voted in/will be voting in?

[muon2]

All presidential and off-year elections since 1976

[muon2]

Who claimed they voted in 1966? Since one needed to be 21 then, that gets us back to being born in 1945. Man, that's old!

I'm curious as to why the poll shifts from presidential years back to 1972, then to off year elections for 1970, 66 and 62 with no mention of the presidential years that decade.

[muon2]

My first election was 1976. I was in college and taking a political science class to fill my social science distribution requirement. It was only taught once every four years, concentrated on presidential elections and paid special attention to the electoral college. Our term paper was a state-by-state analysis due election morning and we shared results in class that day. The professor was surprised that the median response for the class was that Carter would win, but with fewer electoral votes than Kennedy's 303 in 1960. This went against the predictions of the MSM punditry (such as Time magazine) that expected a comfortable, but not landslide, EC win in the mid 300's. The class proved correct when Carter won with 297.

It's fun looking back on that map from 40 years ago. 29 of the 50 states voted this year for the party opposite to the one in my first election. It's why I don't see the parties positions or base voters as locked in stone for more than a few cycles at a time.