Actively participating military is fairly split on the left/right scale, no more than 55/45 to either side with a significant percentage not claiming either party. It's far more diverse these days with persons enlisting with higher education, at older ages, and with more social awareness. It's the almost exclusively white male veterans and near retirement types, age 55+, that still favor the right wing side and, to be fair, are still a large collective number but one this is reducing through the obvious. I believe these two separate voting blocks often get lumped together which gives belief that "the military" are more to the right, which was probably true for many decades but nowhere near reality today from my perception. Active military and veteran women have trended to favor the Democratic nominee, except in 2016.
Perhaps 2016 and 2020 were outliers due to 1) 25 years of a RWNJ media hate campaign against Clinton, and 2) four years of absolute shit leadership from Trump that swung larger differences in both GEs.
https://nowthisnews.com/news/vetera...year-and-trump-wants-to-dump-military-ballots
-With the November election swiftly approaching, 37.4 percent of active-duty troops say they would vote for Donald Trump while 41.3 percent would opt for Joe Biden.-
- That is in stark contrast to a similar Military Times poll conducted in 2016 when 40.5 percent of service members said they would cast their vote for Trump compared to just 20.6 percent who would vote for Hillary Clinton. Noticeably there has been a steep decline in preference for a third party candidate. Back in 2016, 34.3 percent of service members said they would like to vote for a third party candidate and that fell to 12.8 percent by August of this year. -
https://news.gallup.com/poll/154904/veterans-give-romney-big-lead-obama.aspx
- The proportion of U.S. men who are armed forces veterans rises dramatically among those who are 60 and older. The military draft was in force in the U.S. from shortly before the U.S. entry into World War II until the early 1970s. A majority of men now 70 to 89 served in the military, including almost three-quarters of those aged 80 to 89. Less than a fifth of men younger than 50 have served in the military. There is little variation in military service among women across these age groups. -
https://news.gallup.com/poll/109654/veterans-solidly-back-mccain.aspx
-Veterans' affinity for the Republican Party is confirmed by the finding that 47% of those who have served in the military currently identify with or lean to the Republican Party while 39% identify with or lean to the Democratic Party. By comparison, 48% of all U.S. adults are Democratic in their party orientation and 37% are Republican. -
- Veterans are overwhelmingly male (91% of the veterans in the sample are men) and tend to be older (the majority are aged 50 or above). -