When I turned 18, I became a registered Democrat, just like everyone else in my family. And everyone else in Western Pennsylvania. Most elections were determined in the primaries, and you really did not get a say on who was elected unless you were a Democrat.
I turned 18 about a week before the 1984 fall elections. My first vote was for Ronald Reagan!
When I moved out of state, and I needed to re-register, I just could NOT register as a Democrat again, as I felt no kinship whatever to that party. I kept it a secret from my family. Little did I know that one by one, everyone was changing party affiliation.
Pennsylvania is culturally conservative for a northeastern state. One wag described Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh at each end and Alabama in between.”