I've bolded the important parts of the press release:
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The professional core of the U.S. military overwhelmingly favors Mitt Romney over President Obama in the upcoming election — but not because of any particular military issues, according to a new poll of more than 3,100 active and reserve troops.
Respondents rated the economy and the candidates’ character as their most important considerations and all but ignored the war in Afghanistan as an issue of concern.
The Military Times Poll is a secure email survey of active-duty, National Guard and reserve members who are subscribers to the Military Times newspapers (see How We Did It, below).
This population is older and more senior than the military population at large, but it is representative of the professional core of the all-volunteer force.
The 3,100 respondents — roughly two-thirds active-duty and one-third reserve component members — are about 80 percent white and 91 percent male. Forty percent are in paygrades E-5 through E-8, while more than 35 percent are in paygrades O-3 through O-5.
Almost 80 percent of respondents have a college degree — including 27 percent with a graduate degree and more than 11 percent with a post-graduate degree — while an additional 18.5 percent have some college under their belts.
And they are battle-hardened; almost 29 percent have spent more than two cumulative years deployed since 9/11, while a similar percentage has spent one to two cumulative years deployed.
The Military Times poll shows that Republicans continue to enjoy overwhelming support among the military’s professional ranks.
“There is really an affinity for Republican candidates, even though [troops] say that what counts is character and handling the economy,” said Richard Kohn, who teaches military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Poll results indicate that about 66 percent of those surveyed support Romney, compared with about 26 percent who say they will vote to re-elect President Obama.
Obama edges upward
While Obama supporters in uniform are clearly a minority, the president’s standing among Military Times readers has improved 3 percentage points since the 2008 poll, when he was a first-term senator facing off against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. In 2008, 23 percent of respondents supported Obama, while 68 percent backed McCain.That may suggest that the GOP’s dominance on military issues is ebbing, if very slowly, said Peter Feaver, an expert on civil-military relations who teaches at Duke University.
“[For] several decades, the Republicans had what is known as ‘issue ownership’ on national security,” said Feaver, who served as a special adviser to the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “The last five to six years has produced a little bit of a swing of the pendulum.”
He cited several reasons for the potential shift, including a perception that the Bush administration mishandled the Iraq War.
The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. special operations troops also was a boost to Obama’s national security image, and Democrats have courted military voters by emphasizing veterans’ benefits and trying to recast the traditional view of which party supports the military.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2012/10/military-times-poll-romney-bests-obama-2-1-100712/
