Military Voting Behavior
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An Economist article seems to back some of the claims about military voting behavior I noodled about a few days ago:
The Economist’s analysis of precincts that map closely onto military bases found a median swing of nearly eight points towards Joe Biden, compared with a nationwide shift of a little over two points in the same direction. On average, Mr Trump still won these precincts, though his margin shrank by nearly half. Patrick Air Force Base—located on Florida’s Atlantic coast and since renamed Patrick Space Force Base—supported Mr Trump by a 17-point margin in 2016. By 2020, his lead there shrank to 11 points. This method is inexact: two-thirds of enlisted service members who vote send in absentee ballots and military bases are often sprawling compounds where spouses, civilian contractors and other support staff reside and vote.
The swing appears to show up on both sides of the enlisted/officer divide, so it’s not necessarily a story about the officer corps adopting the same political attitudes of other educated professionals. It’s also not clear how much the shift will endure; just eyeballing the difference in southeastern VA between 2020 Biden-Trump and the 2021 election doesn’t suggest a specific shift beyond the overall change in margin between the parties. Still, an interesting development worth keeping an eye on.