Does your partner know who you vote for?

[hardshoulderr]

Do you tell them?
this came up on couples therapy and I wondered if people keep it secret.

I couldn’t be with someone with significantly different political views to me. My partner and I met through political campaigning, lol, so it’s safe to say we are on very similar pages. It depends on the people though, I’m sure some people either don’t care about politics (wtf, lol), or are willing to disagree.

But what if you had a long marriage and then found your political affiliation changed

It wouldn’t bother me. Everyone has a vote and can do what they want with it.

Yes. We both vote the same

Yes - we both vote the same.

Yes. We met through politics.

I don't always know if I'm going to vote the same way election to election, but we have pretty similar political stances, so it's not something that concerns me.

If we were very different (I don't know, one of us had Reform tendancies and the other Green, for example), I don't really think the box we tick on the ballot paper is the only sign of differences?

It wouldn't even occur to me to keep my vote secret from DH.

We don't always vote the same way. We're politically close-ish on most issues.

My DH and I have the same political affiliation. But I really wouldn’t mind if he didn’t. I know lots of people with different political leanings to me. My neighbour votes Reform and we have our occasional chats about the state of the world. I do actually value everyone’s opinion.

My and my husband vote the same way and I could never be with someone who didn’t at least vote similar. We both have very strong views and stances so we both would need them align!

Yes, absolutely. Even (or especially) at times when our political views have changed.

DH was useless when it came to politics previously. In our early days he admitted that he voted for the man with the nicest tie. We almost didn’t last
He now has an opinion based on more important issues than accessories.

I couldn’t stay with him if our opinions were very different though. I’m not sure that he would mind much.

Yes, our views don’t always align, and that’s ok. We’re both centre left though sometimes he’s a bit more centre than me. It would be different if he had more extreme views.

We are both floating/tactical and have had the same MP most of our married lives (25 years +, and the same party for all of that time) so we tend to discuss who we're going to vote for and why. Neither of us has ever voted for the sitting candidate (AFAIK) but I did consider it for the first time last time.

I think it would be really, really strange to keep it a secret from your partner.

Yes of course, I couldn't be married to someone with very different political opinions - how a person votes speaks volumes about their character, values and beliefs.

ETA: In response to your question about long terms marriages and a change of political affiliation, it would depend on the severity of the change. E.g. if a Green voting person becomes Lib Dem it wouldn't be much of a problem. If a Lib Dem person becomes Reform then that's a huge shift and change of personal values and would be a big problem for me.

I have friends of different political persuasions (including a couple who have swung from far left to right) and we are still friends but, for me, it's different with a life partner, those core values need to match even every little detail doesn't.

I'm a floating voter but he has a good idea of my thoughts on current affairs etc and who I am as a person

He doesn't watch me cast my vote so he's only got my word for it but I can't think why I wouldn't tell him who I voted for? Sometimes we vote differently, sometimes the same.

My parents would never tell me. I think that's old fashioned

I’m in this category too. As soon as someone knows where I work they will have a clear view of my political views and values.

I could live with someone who wasn’t as involved/committed as me or who disagreed with me on a few peripheral issues. If there was a fundamental difference though it would turn me off massively and I wouldn’t pursue the relationship.

Well given how drastically the main parties shift position I can't see what would.be odd about affiliations changing ?!

We sometimes vote the same and sometimes we don’t. But we both respect different political views so it isn’t an issue in our marriage if at the time our political view point deviates. It’s not a secret nor do we ever try and sway the other person as we just say we don’t agree and talk about something else.

We don't always vote exactly the same but we are pretty much aligned politically. (Difference is because we live in an area where our first preference has no chance so we often vote tactically.)
I couldn't be with someone with radically different views.
And we always share how we've voted.

Yes. We always vote differently, but respect eachother's views.

DH and I discuss our tactical voting. We have very similar political views so could probably guess how the other voted anyway.

Yes. We talk about politics in general terms quite a lot. We basically agree on political issues but we might vote differently in borderline cases and particularly if tactical issues were involved. In which case I imagine we would have talked about the choice a great deal and be very well aware what the other had eventually decided.

Ballots are confidential, we have similar views over the 40+ yrs I’m sure we’ve not always voted the same (especially local stuff).
If I’d ask he’d tell me. We discuss political stuff most days in one form or another.