Military Times’ poll of the troops

| March 15, 2016

The Military Times has published a poll they did of less than a thousand military voters (as well as from the the Reserve and Guard) and published it under a headline that announces that the military supports Trump and Sanders.

Troops and Trump

The article mentions the fact that retired Marine General James Mattis got a single write-in vote.

Broken down by services, a majority of those polled in the Marines and the Army support a Trump candidacy by about 30% each, and the majority of voters in the Navy and Air Force support Sanders. It generally illustrates how the military is just a mirror image of the general public.

If this poll affects anything in the election, it should influence Hillary Clinton to drop out – she does poorly among all members of the military, across all of the services, despite her name recognition. That’s not surprising given her own well-known dislike for members of the military, the troops only return those feelings.

Category: Military issues

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Old Trooper

So, the sample size is less than .5% and that’s a good indication? Nah, not buying it.

That’s like taking a poll of 695 likely voters and saying that those results are indicative of how the country will vote as a whole.

desert

I hope those polls are not true! What the hell happened to the Navy? Makes me ashamed to have been in it! Bernie Sanders is so freaking STUPID, he says he is not a communist, that he is a socialist..the stupid ass is too dumb to know the Russians brought the name socialist over here in the 30’s because they knew America would not accept the Communism!! Damn..stupidity is rampant in this country..thanks N.E.A for dumbing down our society!!

IDC SARC

Mattis! Mattis! Mattis!

Yef

Well, this poll actually reflects my perception of were the people I serve with are politically.

And my sample is even smaller, limited to the Army, Fort Campbell, and just one battalion.

And yes, and I am shocked as how many of the new Soldiers are socialist leaning. But even more shocked at how many officers hate the Trumpminator.

Just a few years ago, the army was noticeably more conservative.

I blame it on the millenials.

2/17 Air Cav

The millennials didn’t give the military gays, transgenders, training sessions on white privilege, or all but declare every straight male a potential rapist. And feelings. Let’s not forget feelings, self expression and the celebration of diversity (i.e., differences.) There is NO WAY the old Army, for instance, has 22% favoring an avowed socialist. None.

thebesig

Bingo… “old Army”… By extension “old military”. I’ve noticed that the closer a person is to the combat arms MOSs of their respective military, and/or the more likely they are of being carryovers from the old military, the more likely they are of being conservative.

2/17 Air Cav

“About 64 percent of respondents identified as enlisted personnel, and 36 percent identified as officers.” Well, that’s a scream. About 35% were officers and 33.08% of the respondents liked Wide Load or Old Commie.

Hack Stone

Were they self-identified as enlisted and officers?

2/17 Air Cav

“Three individuals polled said they’d leave the service if [Trump] becomes commander-in-chief.” I say find out who they are and shitcan them right now.

Hack. It wasn’t a scientific poll and it omitted a great deal of important info, including party affiliation (1/3 said they were unaffiliated), gender, age, likely/unlikely to vote. The EMs were E4-E7 and AD/Reserve?NG weren’t broken down. It really is just a casual snapshot that may be accurate or wholly inaccurate in terms of representative views.

Pinto Nag

I would be interested to know how many of those respondents are from the pointy end of the spear.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

No one should be surprised by this, both parties are stagnant cesspools of corruption in DC and around the nation. The message has been well received by a lot of republicans and some democrats that it’s time to no longer trust the approved candidates.

Sanders and Trump represent two people least likely to be influenced by the establishment in pursuit of their vision for the United States.

Whether you agree with either man or not is irrelevant to the phenomenon of their relative successes. Both men represent to their respective parties that true alternate position. They are the default choice for those who’ve been hoping for a “none of the above” option.

The other republicans are sad, boring, little men with zero vision and zero inspiration behind them. Kasich and Rubio are two men who actually make paint drying seem interesting, while Cruz is just a fucking weasel pretending to be a religious conservative, that 16% are fooled by his lies is a sad testament to the state of political discourse. Cruz would be the hispanic Obama, he’d never get anything done because his own fucking party hates him and he won’t have the luxury of Obama’s two years with a supermajority should he somehow win the nomination and the White House.

Clinton/Sanders is a tougher call, Clinton is a known liar and fraud and who knows what happens under her presidency. Nothing really good from what I can see, and Sanders won’t be any more effective than Obama or Carter because too few in the legislature share his grand world view. He won’t be able to get legislation through any more effectively than Cruz.

The next 4 years will most likely suck regardless of who gets elected.

The only question is which one of these clowns makes it suck the least?

2/17 Air Cav

“while Cruz is just a fucking weasel pretending to be a religious conservative….” He is a man of faith and he is a conservative. He is a religious conservative. In fact, he is the most religious and the most conservative of all of the candidates. There is no close second.

QM1

I agree. Ted Cruz is the only one that has a record of standing up for everything in the Senate that he promised his constituents back home. He’s a man of integrity and honor.

If the rest of the Washington cartel hates him because he won’t compromise his principles, then that’s fine. That’s just another plus for him in my book.

David

dunno about that… my general impression of a Senator is that by definition he should probably show up for the grunt work, not just when his name is likely to be mentioned. How many votes has he missed? Cornyn is pulling all the weight for Texas, not Cruz.

2/17 Air Cav

It’s true that Cruz has been present for 75% of roll-call votes in the past several months. It is also true that the lion’s share of those were procedural, bot substantive. It is likewise true that Cruz gets an A (97%) from Conservative Review while Cornyn gets an F (50%.) There is no question that Cruz missed votes but that’s understandable, isn’t it? Unlike the current WH occupant who liked to vote “present” when he was in the Senate at all, and unlike Bernie Sanders who has a better voting record and all of the votes wrong, I guess we’ll leave it to Texas to decide if it wants to be pissed at Cruz. Cornyn is pushing 20 years in DC and I’m guessing that he spent a great deal of time ‘running’ for another office or another term when he was being paid to serve.

Sparks

In another poll, 11 out of 10 troops said their biggest gripe and bitches with today’s military service resided in the five sided asylum. They also indicated their support for the troops electing their own Commanders of each branch.

A Proud Infidel®™

There are two things that NO Military Unit in Human History has ever done without or had a shortage of, rumors and gripes.

Poetrooper

“Broken down by services, a majority of those polled in the Marines and the Army support a Trump candidacy by about 30% each, and the majority of voters in the Navy and Air Force support Sanders.”

If that voting demographic were to hold true across the entire force it would indicate a disturbing but to be expected phenomenon: Liberals who do choose to serve most often select the services where they have no risk of serving in ground combat.

Imagine that…

Poetrooper

Should have said the least risk.

OSC(SW) Retired

So we who chose to serve in the Navy and Air Force must be cowards? I think you know where you can stick that.

thebesig

Instead of looking at this by the individual candidates, we could look at this in terms of votes by party. When the numbers are added taking just those two variables, the sample population skews republican.

Now, they did a subscriber poll. I’m interested in the respondent vetting/qualifying procedures that they did… Or was this simply something they did over the internet, to the subscriber, who may be a family member or former member? I’d love to get my hands on the methodology that they used on this survey, as well as the raw data and survey questions.

They did indicate that this wasn’t a “scientific” survey.

Skippy

TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP
FOR
DICTATOR !!!!!!!!!!
or
do
we
want
comrade
Sanders

Bosniarat

Difference?

Bosniarat

Something tells me they did this at the Five sided Sanatorium and left line units out of it, like they did with the removal of DADT.

Sparks

My thoughts exactly.

L. Taylor

1000 among a population of about 500,000 is more than enough to have a very accurate poll on this.

Provided the poll was conducted in a valid way. The question needed to be sufficiently neutral.

And if this was an online poll then you would expect Bernie to get a bump since an individual with internet access and use is correlated with greater levels of positive sentiment for Bernie.

SSG E

Yeah, no matter what the article says, this was NOT a poll, it was simply a record of the sentiments of SMs they were able to reach, who were inclined to voice their opinions. That may or may not represent the actual sentiments of the military, but we have absolutely no way of knowing one way or another. More useless than MRE toilet paper (which at least has one very important use).

SSG E

Oh, and I forgot to mention, you’re completely right that 1,000 is more than enough to be a representative sample – but that requires that they randomly select the population, and get an adequate response rate from those selected. And even then, it’s a measure of the population it was drawn from (those SMs they can reach, I’m going to presume those being Military Times subscribers), not from the military as a whole.

Casey

1,000 might be adequate if they ensured the sample accurately reflects the sampled space. For example, a national poll which shows 45% Democrat, 25% Republican, and 30% independent is skewed. Likewise one with a 60% female / 40% male sample.

an individual with internet access and use is correlated with greater levels of positive sentiment for Bernie.

Ahhh, no.

2/17 Air Cav

Tom Mix decoder ring. Stat!

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Jjak

Don’t worry, the Dems have made sure absentee ballots won’t be counted anyway. Can’t have the rubes stationed in dangerous places actually have a voice in this after all.

OSC(SW) Retired

Hillary’s Dad was a Navy Chief. She is one apple that fell a long way from the tree.

FatCircles0311

Well that is depressing so many in our military are open socialists.

Ex-PH2

In tonight’s results, while not all results have been tabulated as yet, here is part of it:

It appears that shrillary is leading the Bernout by a small margin of percentage points.

The Donhair is leading his three remaining competitors by a wide margin, and some of those who have previously dropped out are still getting a few votes here and there.

Duckworth will face off against Kirk in the fall elections.

And some sky god just dropped a confounded cannonball on my house in the form of a loud and unpleasant thunderclap. Startled the cat out of a perfectly good nap, too.