Johnson Leads Among Officers, Navy, and Air Force
By: Elias J. Atienza
Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson may not be making headway toward the 15 percent he needs to be in the presidential debates, but among active duty military, he is in a statistical dead-heat with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
A poll conducted by Military Times and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families found that Trump leads Johnson 37.6 percent to 36.5 percent, within the study’s margin of error of 2 percent. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was a distant third place, with only 16.3 percent of active duty military supporting her.
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein received 1.2 percent, while 3.2 percent of troops chose a different candidate and 5 percent were not likely to vote.
Officers chose Johnson by the largest margin. 38.6 percent of officers polled chose him, while 26 percent chose Trump and 27.9 percent chose Clinton. Among the enlisted, Donald Trump led with 39.8 percent, while Johnson had 36.1 percent. Clinton was only supported by 14.3 percent of enlisted personnel.
Johnson led among the Navy and the Air Force while Trump led among Army and the Marine Corps. Johnson received the support of 42.3 percent of Navy personnel surveyed while Trump received the support of 28.4 percent and Clinton 21.2 percent. The Libertarian also received the support of 37.8 percent of Air Force personnel. Trump received 34.8 percent and Clinton 18.3 percent.
Among Army personnel surveyed, Trump received 40.6 percent while Johnson received 35.6 percent. Clinton barely broke 14 percent. Among Marine Corps personnel surveyed, Trump received over half of the support with 50.4 percent. Johnson was a distant second with 26.7 percent while Clinton received 10.2 percent. Most interesting was the fact that nearly 12 percent of respondents indicated that they would not vote or were going to write in a different candidate.
This is the first scientific poll conducted among military personnel according to Military Times. Johnson was first among active duty troops and veterans according to previous polls, but were not scientific.
2,207 active duty military personnel were polled. As Military Times reported,”The survey audience was 85 percent male and 15 percent female, and had a mean age of 29 years old. The respondents identified themselves as 73 percent white, 16 percent Hispanic, 8 percent African American, 4 percent Asian and 8 percent other ethnicities. Respondents were able to select more than one race.”
Check out the breakdown as provided by Military Times.
Courtesy of Military Times
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