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Figure 1. Source: Military Times annual surveys, 2003-2007;
weighting done by the author using Department of Defense personnel data.

Has this dissatisfaction with the president translated into declining Republican identification among military personnel? Yes, but less strongly. As Figure 2 shows, the gap between Republican and Democratic identifiers closed significantly during the first two years of the second term - in fact, the Democratic deficit was more than cut in half from 37 to 16 points between 2004 and 2006. In 2007, though, this trend moderated. Republican identification rebounded and Democratic identification receded as violence in Iraq abated, the president appeared to have developed a more coherent and successful strategy for managing the conflict, and Republicans attacked congressional Democrats for wanting to "pull the rug out" from under the troops in their attempts to force a timetable for withdrawal into war funding bills. At the end of 2007, the weighted results found Republicans making up 44% of the military population, as compared to 17% calling themselves Democrats.

Figure 2. Source: Military Times annual surveys, 2003-2007;
weighting done by the author using Department of Defense personnel data.

The Military Vote in 2008

How did these trends extend to military voting behavior in 2008? Let's consider two potential data sources. First, we can look at the Military Times 2008 election survey, weighted to correct for the demographic distortions in the subscriber base. Among active-duty respondents, the weighted results show a slightly closer contest than was originally reported: 60% favored McCain, 29% favored Obama, and 11% were undecided or favored someone else. Obama still trailed by a 2:1 ratio, but these same respondents reported that in 2004, they voted nearly 4:1 in favor of George Bush over John Kerry. Although the military vote almost certainly still favors Republicans for president, the gap has clearly narrowed.

It is important to note that the demographic weighting done here does not render the Military Times poll data fully representative of the active-duty population as a whole. It does make the sample demographically representative, at least along the dimensions I have included, but there is no way to tell with the data available what other factors may exist that are a) correlated with political attitudes; b) correlated with a person's propensity to subscribe to the Times newspapers or to respond to the survey; and c) that are not accounted for by the demographic characteristics included. It is the case, for example, that military donations reported to the FEC ran just about even between Obama and McCain, a result that suggests these survey findings, even after being weighted, may still underestimate Obama's support within the armed services. Of course, it could also indicate that Obama's supporters are simply more willing to give money but still constitute a distinct minority. We will have to await the results of better-designed surveys of the military population to find out.

In the meantime, one place to gauge how Obama actually did in relation to previous Democrats among military voters is in the election returns from military bastions around the country. I looked at returns in 29 of the 30 counties with the highest proportion of residents serving in the military as measured in the 2000 census. (Alaska does not report its returns by county, so one county is excluded from the analysis.) Figure 3 shows how Obama did in relation to Kerry's 2004 performance in these 29 counties, where the military percentage of the adult populatio