Nick Cohen:

When I canvassed working-class northern neighbourhoods for Labour in the 1980s men told me they voted Labour because their ancestors had always voted Labour.

“And how will your wife vote?” I added.

“She’ll vote as I tell her.” 

G. K. Chesterton: 

I remember at another election a sturdy old woman of Somerset, with a somewhat menacing and almost malevolent stare, who informed me on her own doorstep that she was a Liberal and I could not see her husband, because he was still a Tory. She then informed me that she had been twice married before, and both her husbands had been Tories when they married her, but had become Liberals afterwards. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the invisible Conservative within and said, "I'll have him ready by the 'lection." I was not permitted to penetrate further into this cavern of witchcraft, where she manufactured Liberals out of the most unpromising materials; and (it would appear) destroyed them afterwards.