IS THE MILITARY CONSERVATIVE?

Jason Dempsey has been researching the the political attitudes of the military, and the results are interesting. The institution may tilt right, but not nearly so much as is commonly thought. Rather, it's the officer corps which really exhibits a conservative skew:

It is true that the upper echelons of the military tilt right. My own research confirmed that about two-thirds of majors and higher-ranking officers identify as conservative, as previous studies found. But that tilt becomes far less pronounced when you expand the pool of respondents. That is because only 32 percent of the Army's enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. According to data collected in 2004 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 37 percent of the civilian, non-veteran population identified as conservative, 24 percent as liberal, and the remaining 39 percent as moderate or undecided.The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor's degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma.Nevertheless, even when controlling for factors like race and gender, officers are significantly more likely than soldiers to identify as conservative. They do not, however, share a uniformly right-wing outlook on social and political issues. Interestingly, self-identified conservative officers often supplied moderate responses when asked about spending on Social Security, health care, and education. The same held for social issues such as the role of women in the workplace, affirmative action, gun control, and the death penalty. In fact, one-third of the officers who answered such questions in a consistently liberal manner still said they were conservative, suggesting that self-identification as a conservative may be as much a cultural norm among officers as a reflection of ideological preference. Soldiers and non-commissioned officers, on average, also gave moderate responses to questions on social issues. They were, however, more likely than officers to have liberal attitudes on economic issues.

Of course, understanding the opinions of "the military" through the beliefs of the officer class is akin to evaluating "workers" through the voting patterns of executives. Doesn't really hold up.