Jason Dempsey reports on the survey that he and my Columbia colleague Bob Shapiro did of the political attitudes of U.S. military personnel:
The Military Times released the results of a survey showing that members of the armed services planned to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama by a factor of nearly three to one--this at a time when the Democratic nominee was handily beating his Republican rival in almost all national polls. The survey apparently reaffirmed the long-held conventional wisdom that the U.S. military overwhelmingly backs the GOP. . . .
The truth about the military's politics, however, is more complex and all too often obscured by narrowly focused polling. Participants in the Military Times survey, for example, tended to be white, older, and more senior in rank--that is, they were hardly a representative sampling of the armed services. . . .
In a study of the Army that I [Dempsey] conducted in 2004 with my colleague, Professor Robert Shapiro, I tried to get a fuller picture of the social and political attitudes of soldiers, producing the first and only random-sample survey to canvass enlisted personnel and junior officers, as well as their superiors. Broadening the survey yielded results that fly in the face of the conventional view. The Army, it turns out, is hardly a bastion of right-wing thought.
It is true that the upper echelons of the military tilt right. My own [Dempsey's] research confirmed that about two-thirds of majors and higher-ranking officers identify as conservative, as previous studies found. But that tilt becomes far less pronounced when you expand the pool of respondents. That is because only 32 percent of the Army's enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. . . .
The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor's degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma. Nevertheless, even when controlling for factors like race and gender, officers are significantly more likely than soldiers to identify as conservative. . . .
In addition to its ideological moderation, the Army is not as partisan as popularly portrayed. Whereas 65 percent of Americans think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, according to the Annenberg survey, my study shows that only 43 percent of the military identifies with one of the two major political parties. Two out of three officers consider themselves either Republican or Democrat, but only 37 percent of enlisted personnel do so.
Officers tend to be not only more partisan, but also more Republican, with GOP affinity strongest among the highest ranks. While I [Dempsey] was unable to fully parse the reason for this, the evidence strongly suggests the pattern is generational. Today's senior officers entered the Army during the late 1970s and 1980s, a time when the Republican Party had a strong advantage on issues of national defense and the Democratic Party was seen as antiwar if not anti-military. By contrast, junior officers who joined the Army after 2001 are almost as likely to be Democrats as they are Republicans, foreshadowing a possible shift in officer attitudes. . . .
I don't really have anything to add here. There's been lots of discussion of voting by occupation; for example, this graph from our book:
And things get more interesting as you get more specific, as Dempsey did.
The military plays a large role in American life, and so I think studies such as Dempsey's are important for our understanding of politics.
12 comments
I would take issue with equating "the military" with the Army. What about the other branches of the armed forces? While I suspect that the other branches reflect the Army, the study offers no proof of that feeling.
I spent 6 years in the Marine Corps (from the age of 17 to 23) as an enlisted man. My political views at the time were relatively right wing because I believed what I was told and was expected not to question authority of any kind. Now that I've been out for a few years (a couple decades) I am happy to report that I have recovered well enough to be considered a Bleeding Heart Liberal.
I agree with the first poster that it would be interesting to see how the other branches shake out. My bet is that, while the general difference between senior officers and junior officers/enlisted would be present in all branches, the Navy and USAF would lean a bit more to the left and the Marines would tilt strongly to the right.
From a practical perspective, focusing on the Army as a proxy for the military as a whole makes sense, since there are more people in the Army than in the other four branches combined.
Zack, the USAF is notoriously right wing (the Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs and bears all the.... unpleasantness.... that comes with that address.
Otherwise, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of the Navy and the Marines (but what do I know)
My own anecdotal evidence from when I was in supports that (I also recall thinking something similar: us lower enlisted were fans of Clinton while those of command rank were not).
MY question is what is the likelihood of Junior Officers and Enlisted men voting. Do they have similar levels of participation to their age/race/SES cohort or are they more likely to vote.
Just wondering
One of the things I'm always curious about when I run into this kind of summary of data that includes self-identified political labels is how well the self-chosen label correctly identifies the respondent's positions on actual issues.
I'm about as far as you can get from a statistics wonk, but it seems to me that 30+ years of right wing propaganda have left us in a place where the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' have lost all meaning -- particularly when used for self-identification purposes within an institution like the military.
In most of the polls that I've looked at over the last 20 years, in those that include both self-identification and opinions on specific issues, a significant majority (~60%) of the self-identified 'moderates' or 'independents' gave issue responses that showed their opinions to be securely within the progressive spectrum, while the 'conservatives' were all over the place depending on the issue, with an awful lot of evidence suggesting many are strongly conservative around their own specific issue, but otherwise rather moderate.
Not criticizing the work you've done here. Just sayin'.
I live on post at Ft Sam Houston and there are about 14 homes on our culdesac. All the neighborhood kids play and talk together and judging from what the kids were saying during the campaign only one home was voting for McCain. I know that is not as good as a poll, and is only anecdotal.
Also, don't be surprised that the Military Times poll is skewed. Their reporting during the campaign was severely biased against BHO and therefor I would suspect readers and responders to the polls would be overwhelmingly Republican.
Another way of analyzing this problem is by looking at military precincts. In Washington state, I found six military installations with their own precincts -- two airforce, one army, three naval. All in all, there were 1,057 (air force) to 1,802 (army) ballots in each sample.
In 2004, the army precincts voted for George W. Bush, 59% to 40%. In 2008, they voted for Obama, 50% to 48%. The swing was 21.8%.
In 2004, the air force precincts voted for Bush 75% to 23. In 2008, they voted McCain, 63% to 35%. The swing was 24.0%.
Even though Kerry and McCain's branch of service was the Navy, that was the group of precincts that showed the largest swing toward the Democrats. Bush won the Naval precincts I looked at 74% to 25%. McCain's margin was only 55% to 44%. That's a swing of 38.1%.
Now, it's true that base registrations are imperfect. There are plenty of off-base personnel. However, I would argue that this sample is probably better than that of the Military Times. The news here is less that Obama won military personnel (he almost certainly did not, for what I could tell) but that they may have been the concrete demographic that registered the biggest swing. Pretty interesting to me. I wonder if this pattern holds up in other states.
Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson
the new Gallup poll released today pretty clearly shows the military to be republican over democrat. With a sample size of nearly 140,000, it's hard to argue distortion through sampling favoritism.
quigbrew,
I have to quibble with your summary. First of all, the sample size for veterans will be much lower than 140,000, although still high enough that MoE is negligible. Outside of that, sample size has nothing to do with "sampling favoritism." You could have a completely flawed sample of 140,000 very easily. I doubt Gallup does, but a large sample is not proof of a solid methodology.
For the entire duration of the survey (1/2-5/19), the veteran/active population has broken this way:
Republican 34%
Independent 33%
Democratic 29%
The gap among those in likely active-duty age is even higher. So, yes, active-duty military are clearly Republican. This seems about in-line with my findings, which suggest that McCain won military bases by about 10% to 15%, maybe a bit more. A 12-point advantage (about what Gallup indicates they have) corresponds well with that, especially when you consider that some wives are also voting -- probably a less Republican demographic.
But as for the military being "Republican over Democratic," yes, in the most literal sense. But I challenge anyone in a room that splits 59 Republicans to 41 Democrats (or whatever) to even notice the split in numbers. Like most demographics, the military is purple. A redder purple than blue, all indications are, but still purple.
My two cents.
Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson
"The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide."
The differences can also be partly explained by the differences in officer and enlisted promotion systems. Officer promotions are more subjective, particularly at the higher ranks. A dominant worldview (conservative) in the highest ranks will perpetuate itself in promotions of the right sort to their "club".
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