In a survey of the preferences of serving members of the military, including the National Guard, strong preferences emerge in each race for the insurgent candidates.
However, they ran the question as a 'first choice for President' without requiring you to specify which in primary you were going to vote. Thus, we get a sense of overall support that is surprising.
In the Army and Marine Corps, Trump dominates the field. In both services, he has approximately twice the support of the next leading candidate.
In the Navy and Air Force, Sanders is the overall winner. Sanders edges Trump by a few points, though, rather than dominating the field as Trump does. Trump is an easy second place in both fields, although far more so in the Navy: Ted Cruz is close to Trump in the Air Force, but a bit behind.
Even in those latter services, where Sanders is the overall winner, Democratic first-choice votes are a minority. Sanders thus has extremely intense support, because he overcomes both the alleged frontrunner in his own party and a divided Republican field.
Clinton is the first choice of only about ten percent of military voters. The bigger services favor her more than the smaller ones: she is slightly above 12% in both the Army and the Navy, but well under 10% in both the Air Force and Marine Corps.
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"How the survey was conducted
Between March 9 and March 14, Military Times conducted a voluntary, confidential survey of subscribers who include verified active-duty, National Guard and reserve component service members. More than 59,000 subscribers received e-mail invitations to participate. In total, 931 respondents completed the survey.
The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole; it over-represents Army personnel, officers and noncommissioned officers, and under-represents junior enlisted personnel. However, it is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military's day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.
The voluntary nature of this survey, the dependence on e-mail and the characteristics of Military Times readers may affect the results. Statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion polls that use random sampling can't be calculated for this survey."
Not sure how much credence you can put into a survey like this. They tend to overweight candidates with highly enthusiastic followers (Bernie, Trump), so it could be off by quite a bit. I think the only reliable takeaway is 'not Hillary'.
OK, although bear in mind that leaving out the junior enlisted also leaves out Democrats disproportionately. It's the older folks in the military that trend Republican so strongly. Lots of kids come in as Democrats, but fewer leave that way.
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