Dem
47
GOP
53
Here is the question we put before readers last week:
J.H. in Portland, OR, asks: We've seen how many of the Electoral-Vote.com faithful are connected to the computer sciences and now I'm wondering how many are involved with ham radio. I ask this because I wonder if there is a correlation between technical curiosity and experimentation, and the awareness and interest in political events. Or between other areas of interest and interest in political events.
So, I would like to know: What are Electoral-Vote.com readers' hobbies?
We got many, many, many responses. Based on the overwhelming interest, as well as some of the feedback, we are going to run some messages today from readers who mentioned multiple interests. Then, next week (and possibly the week thereafter), we'll run messages focused on one particular interest. We'll round it out with a reader poll. When all is said and done, we'll have given as thorough an answer to J.H.'s question(s) as we are capable of doing.
D.N. in Silver Spring, MD: I'm a retired Computer Science professor. My field was (and still is) AI, though not LLMs and chatbots. I think that approach has some limitations that its proponents are trying to ignore.
For many years I was an avid contradancer (a folk dance from New England), but had to quit when I developed some back problems. I also used to listen to a lot of music, but that's getting difficult due to high-frequency hearing loss. This is frustrating since my wife is a musician.
Some of my fondest memories involve the foreign travel I was able to do as a professor—but lately I've been reducing that, partly for concern about my carbon footprint.
Before retirement, I commuted to work by bicycle, even in the middle of the winter, and I still like to run errands on my bike. I also like walking—not as much as bicycling, but often it's feasible when biking isn't.
Lately I've been doing a lot of reading—no particular subject; it depends on what catches my eye. Audiobooks and text-to-speech are nice because I can listen to them through my hearing aids while performing other activities. And when I get a chance, I like playing board games.
Finally, although this probably doesn't qualify as leisure, I'm still doing some research activities even though I'm retired. As with many professors, I've had trouble giving it up because of its importance to my sense of identity.
P.S. in Seattle, WA: Thank you for asking about our hobbies! I much look forward to the compilation. Here are mine, in order of appearance over my lifetime:
- Chess
- Astronomy
- Languages
- Politics
- Geography
- Travel
- Running/"Jogging"
- Cooking
- History and genealogy
- Skiing
- Writing and editing
- Gardening
- Hiking/Backpacking
Thank you!
S.J.M. in Austin, TX: My MS is in computer science and my hobbies are scuba diving, photography and astronomy/eclipse-chasing. In other words, anything involving gadgets gets my attention.
V.M. in Cincinnati, OH: Sorry to disappoint J.H. in Portland, but I might go against their hypothesis. My day job is in academic medicine, and I suppose that counts as being involved in "experimentation," but I would otherwise not be considered techie by any stretch of the imagination.
My hobbies include cooking, listening to music and comedy, and reading. In addition, in spite of no personal experience or skill, I am somehow in my 6th year of coaching my daughter's in volleyball, thus setting records for most time spent doing an activity that I enjoy and yet seemingly gaining no useful experience or knowledge.
Looking forward to hear what the rest of group keeps up to!
B.J. in Arlington, MA: Hobbies that I am passionate about and have been for many years:
- Whitewater kayaking
- Rock climbing
- Skiing
- Poker
- Contract bridge
My wife and kids also climb and ski so we do those together, which is great. My wife plays bridge but we haven't played since having kids. The others I do myself.
Although I am a professional software engineer, I have not "played with computers" (programming side projects, etc.) as a hobby in many years.
Since the original question mentioned it, I add that I am also a licensed ham radio operator, but I have not used a ham radio since the 1990s, and then only barely.
M.B. in Menlo Park, CA: I enjoy travel, playing the guitar and ukulele, cat videos, Taylor Swift concerts, and politics (as a spectator).
A.M. in Mexico City, Mexico: My hobbies are:
- Reading
- Running
- Video games
- Puzzles of any type. I love jigsaw puzzles and I do the New York Times crossword puzzle and their other games (Wordle, Connections, Strands) every day.
I also love escape rooms, but between work (I'm a teacher) and raising my toddler, I rarely have time to go to one.
K.F.K. in CleElum WA: I live in a small city of 2,200—85 miles East of Seattle over Snoqualmie Pass. My hobbies include hiking, dog walks, bicycling, library book club, non-fiction book club, Spanish conversation group, movie club, and gardening. I have two big vegetable patches, one that grows food for the local food bank and one that grows food for me. Technology? HA!! When I retired from teaching I thought "won't have to learn any new technology" and in reality I rebelled and refused to learn anything about a software program being promoted in my final 2 years. Yes, this goody-two-shoes sat through two years of workshops sulking and muttering, "It's just worksheets on a screen, not gonna do it," and I must say I was quite successful at being clueless about this particular "life-changing" software when I retired.
At the end of the day, I'm pretty low-tech and maybe not even that well-informed politically. I duck under the table whenever (V) or (Z) writes, "Our faithful readers will surely know/understand whatever." I often learn new words while reading the site and will confess to skipping entire paragraphs at times. I do read the New York Times, The Guardian and a couple political blogs somewhat more randomly than Electoral-Vote.com. Finally, I follow the Episcopal priest Joseph Woo, and I am quite involved in our small but mighty Episcopal Church here in Upper Kittitas County.
C.K. in Haymarket, NSW, Australia: I find this question very interesting, and I am looking forward to seeing the answers!
My hobbies are playing bridge, playing board games, gardening, and sewing.
My interest in politics stems from caring deeply about people and the planet and feeling powerless by myself to do anything to help.
P.S. My guess is there is a correlation with education level. I earned a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from UC Davis.
L.K. in San Carlos, CA: Tennis and gardening.
K.H. in Albuquerque, NM: Maybe set up an online survey for this one? I can see you getting buried in responses.
- Photography
- Bread baking
- Bonsai
- Board games
- Volunteering at our local botanic garden
D.A. in Brooklyn, NY: Online informal chess (shout-out to EV-er ShellyBeatsKeats!) and striving to attain at least mediocrity in playing electric blues on guitar.
R.D.K. in Ebensee am Traunsee, Austria: To paraphrase those who lament a lack of time for reading: Too many hobbies, not enough time!
- Birdwatching and ornithology (I have a BA in Biology).
- IT (I worked as a software developer for 35 years and built a database-driven website on the side, from setting up and running the servers to writing the code, importing data, and fielding user requests.)
- Genealogy (which involves much more digital detective work than one might think)
- Human languages (which overlaps with genealogy, having to read outdated languages and scripts)
- Watching American football (but only since moving to Europe, as a link to my roots)
R.L.D. in Sundance, WY: I have some friends who were into amateur radio when we were in high school but I never got into it myself. I did spend some time as a radio operator in the Army National Guard back in the day, but that's a whole different kind of thing.
My current hobbies are:
- Tabletop role-playing games, though the groups I'm currently playing with meet on a website for that purpose, so "tabletop" is pretty loosely defined.
- I've always considered constitutions, the U.S. Constitution, and constitutional law to be a hobby.
- I have both a coin and a stamp collection, but I don't really spend any time on either anymore. I half-jokingly say my hobby is collecting collections.
- There's not a lot of karaoke in these parts, but that is something I enjoy when available.
- Also related to my RPGs is alternate history. I love writing them, I love researching them, I love reading them, I love setting them up for my players to interact with.
- My current video/computer game obsession is Valheim, a survival/building/combat game set in the Norse afterlife.
L.R.H. in Oakland, CA: Well, the question about hobbies is a little difficult to answer, because at least one of my hobbies was more of a lifestyle.
I hold a second-degree black belt in a little-known martial art and for decades of my adult life attended or taught from one to four 2-hour classes every week. For 14 years, my jobs were strictly to support my martial arts habit; I eventually moved to a profession that was gratifying in and of itself. I retired from my primary style during the pandemic when it was not possible to have in-person classes.
I've been collecting ephemera related to the career of a semi-famous opera singer for about 30 years. It is probable that only this singer's family and the Royal Opera Archive have comparable collections. I know that I have some material that they do not. I've collected an assortment of ephemera related to other singers as well. I have a unique item related to the career of a different singer that's going to the Metropolitan Opera Archive as soon as I can get some kind of estimate as to its value.
I go to a ridiculous number of musical performances every year, probably between 100 and 150/year. I've seen so many operas that I keep a spreadsheet so I can keep track of the works themselves and how many times I've seen each. This is somewhere between a hobby and a profession: I've been writing about and reviewing classical music and opera for more than 20 years and I have a blog related to those fields too. Now that I'm retired from both my profession and jujitsu, I am writing and reviewing a lot more than previously. During my first year, I wrote about once piece per month. This year, I'll have written nearly fifty.
I like to travel and I'm a serious cook. I'm also considering going back to playing my primary instrument from earlier in my life.
B.S. in Huntington Beach, CA: I am a retired college professor and administrator (sorry, Z). I studied and taught mathematics, but have always loved history. I cannot remember a time when I was not interested in politics. As a first grader, I can remember chants on the playground of "Nixon, Nixon he's our man, throw old Kennedy in the garbage can!" In junior high civics, I took the side of stopping the bombing in Vietnam in order to advance peace talks. I wore a POW bracelet all through my high school days. I cannot tell you why I found politics so compelling at such a young age, and I retain my passion to this day.
As an aside, I get more information and enjoyment from Electoral-Vote.com on a daily basis than from any other source of political information.
My lifelong hobbies have been reading, music (playing my guitars), and fly fishing—mostly dry flies. Travel has become more important in my retirement years, but does not crack my top three.
M.F. in Des Moines, IA: I've played Dungeons & Dragons for 35 years, since the days when THAC0 was a thing and lower Armor Classes meant better armor. I've been running a homebrew game for the last 25 years of that, spanning over 200 years of in-game history.
I'm also an amateur cinephile and will write online reviews and reactions to films, and sometimes TV. I tend to focus on things like theme, subtext, and characterization and how the tools of cinema are used (or fail to be used) to bring those things out. Which anyone who has been on a public comment section lately could predict feels like an uphill battle much of the time. I don't know if shallow hot-take "analysis" like CinemaSins has damaged media literacy, or if poor media literacy led to the popularity of those kinds of takes, but I'm guessing others whose hobbies include a deep love of film have felt the same frustration.
G.B. in Collin County, TX: Besides politics watching (thanks for enabling that!), I have a couple hobbies. I'm a pretty good home cook that brings baked goods to work every now and then. And before I moved out on my own and money got tight, I collected movies. There are two decent-size shelves of Blu-Rays/DVDs sitting in my parents' game room right now. Whenever the Internet goes out (which is semi-frequent out here on the edge where suburbia ends and the country begins), they find it useful.
J.C. in Arlington, VA: The list:
- Cooking
- Reading about cooking
- Reading romance novels
- Doing deep, deep, dives into agentic LLM technology
- Esoterica videos by Dr. Justin Sledge
L.A. in Waynesboro, PA: I really enjoy the reader questions. So I thought I'd answer the new one today about Electoral-Vote.com's readers' hobbies.
I'm retired from my career as a Physician Assistant in Surgery and Emergency Medicine. Current "hobbies" are things I work at every single day, and a day without any of them I consider unproductive, if not wasted.
I love sewing, quilting, costuming (I don't call what I do "cosplay"), and beading (although I don't consider myself a "professional," I do all these to a professional level and take commissions, sell items, etc.). I love textile and clothing history and manage a non-profit devoted to studying and preserving Victorian quilts and clothing. At its foundation, I need creativity every day; repairing, recycling, teaching techniques. It's how I am able to live in the world.
My most recent hobby is restoring antique parasols. It started when I was given an antique parasol with a silk canopy that was literally exploding (silk tends to shatter with age if not treated carefully). So I found an article in Threads magazine on how to replace a canopy, and now I do several of them a month! And other costumers and reenactors buy them!
I also collect antique sewing notions and Victorian hair wreaths and jewelry. And I go to flea markets and thrift stores frequently and wherever I travel. So I guess that counts as a hobby, too.
I don't think any of this relates to interest in politics. Although my lifetime interest in history has now focused on what I call "domestic history"—learning about how actual ordinary people lived their lives in the material culture of their time.
There's still time to submit responses to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Leisure Where?" Please do keep in mind that the remaining postings will feature messages focused on one hobby, or maybe two.