Even at time I did it, I regretted it so much I needed a pint of the strongest IPA available before I could go through with it.
I voted for a conservative Republican.*
The reason why I did this isn’t due to any sudden ideological shift on my part. I would’ve voted for a Democrat if there had been one on the ballot but seeing as how the state Democratic Party gave up on my district as hopeless, this was not an option. There were only two Republicans on the primary ballot: the incumbent and a challenger. Politically, both are almost identical (e.g., anti-tax, small government, socially conservative, etc.). Usually in a situation like this, I just leave that part of the ballot blank but this time I could not, in good conscience, do that. That is because there is still a major difference between the two: the challenger is not a bat-shit insane conspiracy-minded crackpot with poor impulse control and a disturbing history of violence.
I had to vote for the challenger even though he’s 180 degrees from where I stand politically. The incumbent is an embarrassment to my district who makes everybody here look like a bunch of trigger-happy reactionary lunatics. The sad thing is he’ll probably still win.
Anyway, that’s why I voted the way I did. What I want to know is whether any other Dopers ever voted for candidates whose political beliefs were directly opposite to their own and the reasons why.
*In case you’re wondering, the state where I live has mail-in ballots which are sent off several weeks before the election. Until Election Day, you can fill out your ballot and either mail it in or drop it in a box outside a public library (which is what I did this afternoon).
I voted for Obama in the 2008 primary. I voted in the Dem primary that year because a friend of mine was running for office. There’s no scenario where I’d vote for Hillary Clinton, so Obama got the nod.
The combination of views I hold are such that few are aligned with me 100%, so almost every vote will be for someone who disagrees with me in some way. Yes, sometimes even holding the direct opposite from one of my views.
Such is life – I consider the whole spectrum of options and choose as best as I can.
In 1980, I voted for Reagan because Jimmy Carter, pacifist that he was, had just made me register for the Draft. If I was going to end up in the army, I wanted the Commander in Chief to have a fighting chance of knowing what the hell he was doing.
I voted for Rick Santorum in the 2012 Michigan primary. I wanted to embarrass Romney by denying him a win in his former home state and extend the primary season, forcing him to spend money in the primaries that he couldn’t spend in the general election. I would just as soon see Charles Manson win the presidency as Santorum, but extending the middle digit to Romney was all I was hoping to do.
In the OP’s situation, I would probably have done the same. As it is, though, the closest I’ve come was a vote for a Libertarian, because the Democrat who was officially on the ballot wasn’t actually running (as in, he spent zero dollars on his campaign-- Didn’t even pay twenty bucks to register a website).
*I felt she would have been easier to defeat in the general election. Unfortunately John Mccain became the Republican candidate and I couldn’t vote for him in the general election anyway.
*I felt that if elected POTUS she couldn’t possibly fuck up the country as bad as I knew Obama could.
Next week I will vote in the democratic primary for kind of the same reasons. I want weaker candidates in the general so Republicans win the race.
Except for the race for Sheriff. I’m voting against my former boss because while he is a decent sheriff he’s a real shit to work for. He is the reason myself and others retired earlier than we originally intended. I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who treats his employees the way he does.
John Kerry. It’s better to have a liberal President than a Republican damaging the conservative brand with his incompetence. Also, liberals were apoplectic and I thought it would be nice to get them on board with actually governing our country rather than the four year temper tantrum we saw instead. I figured if Kerry was President suddenly they’d stop bitching all the time since now a Democrat was doing it. That turned out to be correct, albeit it took until 2008 to find out that Democrats actually didn’t have a problem with domestic spying or wars to overthrow dictators(ahem, Qaddafi). at least not a big enough problem to compare Obama to Hitler.
One blogger in 2004 called this the “Let the wookie win” strategy.
I voted for the Tea Party candidate for Governor of California in the recent primary (it’s an open primary for all voters and all candidates) so that he would be the cannon fodder vs. Jerry Brown. He came in third, though.
Even if not, there is incentive to make the other guys run the worst candidate so that you can run up the score on them and increase the perceived size of your mandate.
The Democrats around here are notorious for running weak candidates - witness the new nominee for Governor who won the primary without spending a dime on campaigning other than mailing crazy-sounding letters to all the newspapers.
So last week I voted for the Republican incumbents for governor and senator, just because their opponents were tea party types who would easily win in November if they managed to get the nomination (thankfully neither did).
While I was at it I was able to enjoy voting against my US Congressperson and state senator - both of whom are also ultra-right wingers. Their opponents may have been worse but there was no danger in those races of the incumbent not winning.
At least I get a month or two without those postcards in the mail calling Common Core part of Obama’s federal takeover of education. Those make my head hurt.