No “Social Conservatives” in the Career Military?

A reader emailed to ask about a comment made in a column last week by the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan (as noted by Mickey Kaus): 

I’ve never met a career military man who was a conservative on social issues. I think they tend to see questions such as abortion and marriage as essentially uninteresting, private and not subject to the movement of machines. (Connected to this, I suspect Mr. Webb will benefit to some degree by the high number of military retirees in Virginia. They’re always assumed to be hawks on Iraq. From personal experience I’d say a high percentage have been dubious about the war, many from the beginning.)

The reader wondered what survey research might have to say about the views of the career military on "social" issues.  I did an initial search this morning and the answer is not as easy to find as one might think.

As regular readers might guess, representative surveys of the career military are rare, difficult to conduct and tend to focus mostly on military issues.  The Military Times newspapers, for example, have conducted regular mail-in surveys of its readers (who are more likely to be officers and "career oriented" than the larger military population), but the questions they ask do not directly address Noonan’s point.   There are some hints, however, in their most recent survey: 

• Half of the Military Times readers identify as conservative or very conservative (50%), but just as many identify as moderate (33%), liberal (7%) or refuse to say (10%).  Only 8% describe themselves as "very conservative."   Surveys of all U.S. adults typically put the conservative percentage somewhere between 30% and 40%. 

• They are more Republican than other Americans, but not exclusively so:  56% of the Military Times readers considered themselves Republicans, 13% Democrats, 15% independent and 16% either identify with another party or refuse to say.   The Republican percentage among all adults typically falls in the high 20s to low 30s.

The one "social issue" that the Military Times asks about is also a military issue, and here the Military Times respondents are more conservative than other Americans:  27% answer "yes" when asked if "openly homosexual people should be allowed to serve in the military" (59% say no and 14% do not answer).  Compare that to the recent Pew Research Center survey that found 60% of Americans in favor of "allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military."

The 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES) is another data source that comes close but does not directly address Noonan’s point.  In October 2004, NAES did a two–part release on results among active military personnel and their family members that included tabulations (see Table B) among 371 respondents that were either active duty military (n=177) or Guard/Reserve members (n=199): 

• Consistent with the Military Times survey, 47% identified as Republican, 15% as Democrats and 26% as independent

• During 2004 they gave George Bush strong job approval (74% positive) and favorable ratings (77%), while rating John Kerry negatively (26% favorable, 57% unfavorable).  By a three-to-one margin (69% to 22%) they said that Bush rather than Kerry "shares my values."

So the members of the military seem more likely to describe themselves as Republican and conservative than most Americans.  They were certainly more comfortable with George Bush than John Kerry in 2004.  So concluding that "career military men" are rarely if ever "conservative on social issues" seems like a bit of a stretch.  On the other hand, the fact that only 9% of the Military Times readers described themselves as "very conservative" may support at least the gist of Noonan’s observation.   

To be fair, none of these data are exactly on point.  I’ll dig further…

UPDATE (6/20):  Thanks in large part to very helpful comments by Richard Eichenberg and Paul Gronke below, I’ve posted more here.