In November will you vote “For” your preferred candidate because you believe in his/her message or will you vote “Against” a candidate because ANYONE would be better than him/her.
Both. I suppose my “against” feelings are a lot stronger than my “for” feelings, but they’re both significant.
I’ll probably be voting against all the actual candidates. That’s because I’m in a solid blue state and there’s no reason to consider my vote matters. If it did I would only vote for a candidate, and this year it would be a really difficult choice to find the least offensive of them.
I am happily voting for. I don’t expect congress will allow her to accomplish much, however.
I am voting* for* Hillary,(she would get my vote versus any of the 17 Republicans who were in the race this year). However, I would vote against Trump in almost any circumstance, so it’s hard to say. I used to think Trump was a buffoon, but at least not as bad as Cruz or Walker. Now I’m reevaluating that.
Both but since one candidate is the most dangerous in world history, I’m voting AGAINST Trump at the same time voting for Hillary
I hate Trump immeasurably more than I like Clinton.
As others have said, I’m doing both. I like Hillary Clinton. I voted for her for Senator and I’ll vote for her as President.
That said, I’m voting against Donald Trump as well.
It’s a little of both. I’m firmly never-Trump, so Clinton is the best strategy for opposition, and there’s so much crazy in the Republican party right now, I’m tempted to vote against the whole party until they come to their senses. But if I was only voting against them, I might go Libertarian. Clinton is a pretty close match to my positions anyway and she has qualifications/experience that put her ahead of most primary candidates from either party.
I’m voting FOR a third party candidate. I voted AGAINST a major party candidate, by voting for the other party’s candidate once, not only did I feel very uncomfortable about it, the way things played out, that person won and I wasn’t happy with how his presidency went and I didn’t make the mistake of voting for him a second time.
When it comes to voting, I have two simple rules. The first is, I will only vote for a candidate that is on the ballot, unless there’s some organized write-in campaign; if I’m going to vote for Mickey Mouse or whatever, I might as well stay home. The point here being, someone on the ballot has at least some minimal support, whatever amount that is, and so theoretically has a chance of winning (even if it is lower than my chance of getting struck by lightning) and has established some sort of stance on various positions such that a vote carries some meaning for it. If I vote Mickey Mouse, not only am I guaranteed that my vote has no chance of impacting the election, even as a protest vote, it’s not clear if I don’t support either candidate because I’m really right-wing or left-wing or communist or libertarian or whatever. I suppose a write-in could be something like Joe Biden or Ron Paul or Karl Marx or whatever and that might imply something, but being a one-off, it’s just statistical noise.
Second, a candidate has to EARN my vote. You don’t get it by default be being slightly less offensive that the other major party candidate. You earn my vote by have a relevant experience or otherwise convincing me you are capable of that job. You earn it by support a platform that I can generally get behind, whereby I agree with most of it and there’s no deal-killers in there. There’s been candidate where I agreed with enough of their positions that I’d have considered voting for a major party candidate, but his position on gay rights made it impossible for me to vote for him. That is, my vote is an implicit endorsement not just of the policies I agree with, but of all the ones I disagree with too. If there’s no one I can feel comfortable endorsing, I’ll stay home.
I will NOT vote out of fear AGAINST a candidate. I think that’s a big part of why our system is so flawed (first past the post voting aside), we’re so motivated by fear of the worse major party candidate rather than finding who is truly the best person for the job. I don’t have any expectation that the candidate I’m voting for will win, but maybe if third party candidates get enough votes, especially if that covers the spread between Trump and Clinton, which it’s looking like it will, maybe the major parties will start looking at those third party candidates’ platforms and seeing what they can do to adjust their own to lure some of those votes back.
And frankly, I’m not all that scared of either of them, Trump hasn’t been making a lot of friends in the Republican establishment recently, and I don’t think anyone expects a Republican congress to work with Clinton, so I doubt we’ll see much of either’s agenda pass.
Voting against Trump. Not a fan at all of Clinton. Like, she’s my least favorite candidate sine I’ve been old enough to vote. Except the horrific, joke, racist, pig that is Trump. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a country that has him as a leader.