How well did Biden and Trump do in counties with a military presence?

[Alben Barkley]

There appear to have been significant swings towards Dems in most counties/cities heavily dominated by a military presence, with Biden winning some outright such as Virginia Beach.

Moreover, the military vote coming in from overseas actually seems to have favored Biden in some/most cases (though I’m not sure how much of that is mixed in with other overseas ballots and what the ratio is so hard to say for sure).

In any case, pretty clear that at the very least Trump took a massive hit with the military, and may have even lost their vote outright. If so, pretty sure he’d be the first Republican in ages to do so.

[Alben Barkley]

Bernie Sanders led in military donations among all candidates so it's no surprise they turned hard to Biden.

I think the number one reason is that many members of the military now join for economic reasons. They see the crushing piles of education and health debts and realize putting on camo shouldn't be a requirement for getting basic things like that, especially in lower income communities where the opportunities are so limited. It's a socialist jobs and welfare program, and most people are just decent people working like any other type of job.

There are still the mouth breather/ libertarian type with the "I got mine, fook everyone else" perspective, like the barely-literate cartoon character from my high school who went to the Naval Academy (and another expensive university, costing the taxpayers probably $500,000+ right off the bat) and has been posting for the last week on Facebook about how the election was stolen, but I think that's a lower percentage than it used to be.

I don't think Trump's comments had a major effect to that degree, although a few people might have been swayed.

Bernie led in donations across lots of groups. Remember that map that showed like every county in America, he got the most donations?

Turns out it didn't really mean anything when it comes to votes, though.

I'm PRETTY sure given how conservative the ethos of the military generally is, and how many decades on end it's consistently voted Republican, that if Trump lost it, probably had a lot more to do with how blatantly disrespectful the man has been to them for years than that the military suddenly became socialist in four years.

Now I'm not talking about JUST the "suckers and losers" comments, but also the McCain/POW comments before them, Trump's own history of very ignoble non-service, and that's not to mention that if I was putting my life on my line for my country, I wouldn't want my Commander-in-Chief to be as erratic, unstable, and petty as Donald Trump. Seems like it may have finally reached a breaking point.

But I'm not convinced that if the Democratic nominee wasn't someone the military already knew and trusted would be fairly moderate and reasonable and prudent in his foreign policy, they would have done the same. Bernie's also called for massive cuts to military spending, which I don't think would have gone over well with them, even those who do join primarily for economic reasons.

[Alben Barkley]

Oh and by the way this doesn't even get into the whole "Russian bounties" thing.

I HIGHLY DOUBT I would vote for a Commander-in-Chief who even slightly had the chance of being OK with a foreign adversary literally paying to have me killed if it was me.

Frankly, at this point, the military voters who DID vote for Trump will have more to answer for than those who didn't.

But since it's increasingly looking like the military as a whole voted against him, seems like that Military Times poll will stand alongside the Selzer poll as among the most accurate of the election.

I KNOW FDR won the military vote back during WW2 (he WAS the widely admired Commander-in-Chief after all) but I'm not sure if there has EVER been a time since then until now when a Republican lost, let alone one who was the current Commander-in-Chief! Just goes to show how little faith our troops had in this a-hole. With damn good cause.

Also, if it is indeed true that the military voted for Biden but cops voted for Trump, that's probably also the biggest discrepancy in our history between the votes of those two groups.