ViaPeter Feaver, this year’s annual Military Times poll — valuable not for any individual year’s findings, since it solicits responses and therefore isn’t scientific, but for measuring trends among career military folks — finds a largely conservative officer corps that isn’t buying what the GOP is selling: “„An exclusive survey of some 1,800 active-duty troops shows the percentage of self-identified Republicans has decreased by one-third since 2004, from 60 percent to 41 percent, while the percentage of self-identified independents has nearly doubled to 32 percent during the same period.
The big drop appears to have occurred in 2008 and 2009, indicative of broader political sentiments in the country during that period. But that doesn’t translate into increased warmness for the Democrats or for President Obama. While uniformed sentiment on Obama will probably take another year to track as a poll trend, this year finds them “virtually divided” on the president. Yes, the guy who ordered two big troop increases to Afghanistan. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, the respondents are “more pessimistic about the mission in Afghanistan” than in recent years.
Alas, the crosstabs are for subscribers and I am not a subscriber.