Centerfield

My old supervisor used to say: The reason stereotypes arise, is that there is a grain of truth in them.
For me at least, this just reinforced that view.

I can't say there is anything I would consider shocking. I think it is safe to say that a lot of liberals would not even consider military service. A lot of conservatives to not want to deal in academia and would rather work in real world enviroment. I think those two items would tend to skew the proportions in ways shown.

Liberal academia has so shunned all things military since the Vietnam War that this is hardly surprising. Throwing out ROTC chapters and refusing to allow military recruiters on campus naturally causes the two groups to have little in common.

Military types often do choose to enter the academic realm. Virtually all military officers have college degrees, often advanced ones. NCOs are very strongly encouraged to earn degrees too, and senior NCOs often have them. I was strongly encouraged to go to college when I was a junior enlisted man in the Air Force, and our supervisors would try to make our daytime schedule more flexible, so we could attend mid-day classes. The military encourages members to get a college education. Academia does not reciprocate however, and, to say the least, does not exactly encourage military service.

I'm a center-leftie, who went through his military recruitment years in the DC suburbs. I'd been giving serious thought to the question when the recruiter came to my house, and I gave him the courtesy of a straight answer: based on my job and academic performance to date, I didn't believe I'd respond well to discipline.... Now, it's also true that I never saw it as a career path, rather preferring to look at science and engineering (my Dad was a scientist). Most kids in my high school preferred to either look at the kind of direction their parents took, or some kind of government service. Presumably, not unlike the motivations for military career decisions.

Note that there are many academics who(check out Robert Farley on lefarkins.blogspot.com, for example; he cares enough to do a cool weekly battleship blog despite his strong anti-Bush positions) are interested in the military. Interestingly, for some reason politics does vary widely by discipline. Computer Scientists are pretty moderate, but it's true that lit profs are generally fairly leftie.

Only 15 percent of the officers were Democrats, while 47 percent were Republicans and 31 percent independents.

What were the other 7%?

40 percent of the officers say they are conservative, 40 percent moderate, and just 7 percent liberal.

Or is it the other 13%?

The results sound about right, but I don't trust surveys to be accurate.

Bernie, the "Others" (not to be confused with the bad guys on "Lost") probably "decline to state" and/or are "not registered." There's a small, but significant minority of military officers that do not believe it is appropriate for military officers to participate in any political activities, including voting. They see their mission of service to the nation as being so inherently unpolitical that they do not believe they should even vote, believe it or not.

Also, there are instances when it just becomes infeasible to vote: students in Ranger School, for example, are unlikely to use their eight-hour break every three weeks to fill out their absentee ballot. If you change bases at certain points in the year, it can also be challenging to get your absentee ballot in time.

But I'm with Jim M in that this is something of a natural "faultline" in those two fields, just as we should expect businessmen to be generally "conservative" and journalists to be generally "liberal." Exceptions will always exist, but I think it's just a natural tendency of humans to select careers according to their interests.

I thought any declined to comment were simply not figured in to the percentages but added in a separate statistic of non-responce. The ones that are unavailable to vote would not be available to be surveyed. Any that do not believe they should vote would be few and far between. The military does a good job or hitting you over the head with anual training on what is and is not allowed as far as politics. You are encouraged to vote, you can be a member of a political party, you can not hold office in a political party, ect. Talking politics at work is pretty much taboo. The military has a significant percentage of people with an odd sense of humor. It would not surprise me to learn that the missing gave responces of comunist, socialist, or wican, just to spite the pollsters.

Very interesting! I liked it! White Opponents is always Astonishing Table: http://www.stuff.co.nz/ , when Gnome is Circle it will Loose Stake Hedge Loose Kill - that is all that Corner is capable of , Small Game becomes Tremendous Player in final Big Round is always Astonishing Mistery