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The following Newsmax article says:

A majority of America's military troops are backing Donald Trump – with career-minded forces favoring him by a 3-to-1 margin over Hillary Clinton, a Military.com poll shows.

The survey, released Wednesday, shows of more than 1,300 active-duty members of the National Guard or Reserve, 67 percent plan to vote for Trump compared with 21 percent who say they will vote for Clinton.

But, these numbers are disputed by many Twitter users:

enter image description here

What percentage of troops support President Trump according to latest polls?

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  • Politics/polls can change over night. That article was from November 2nd, and those tweets are from Feb 9th.
    – UnsettlingTrend
    Commented Feb 12, 2017 at 23:15
  • Please do not confuse "support" as in popularity with "support" as in directly supporting unconstitutional acts. When I was in the US Navy, I supported Jimmy Carter. If his administration had asked us to fire into peaceful protestors, or surround congress, or those kinds of things you see in dictatorships, many of us would have refused. The first part of the US military oath is, "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same". The president comes after that.
    – RichF
    Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 5:38
  • @RichF You'd better be absolutely 100% certain that an order is unlawful before disobeying it. Even in your contrived examples, I can think of circumstances where you would have been wrong to disobey.
    – Michael J.
    Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 15:44
  • @MichaelJ. True. Such disobedience would quite possibly lead to getting shot on the spot. But the world, including the USA, has already established, and even mocks, the defense, "I was just following orders." A good soldier must think.
    – RichF
    Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 16:56

2 Answers 2

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The original source for the 3:1 number is military.com, and it is worth looking at the source. The poll is from Oct. 24 - Oct. 31 2016.

Career-oriented troops favor Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by a 3:1 margin, a new Military.com reader survey has found.
[...]
Trump's lead narrows when the results are filtered for the active component. For example, among only active-duty respondents, 63 percent said they plan to vote for him. [...]
Military.com conducted a voluntary online survey of readers [...] The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole. It includes a higher percentage of airmen, soldiers, officers and noncommissioned officers, and a lower percentage of women, minorities and junior enlisted personnel than are in the force.

NBC News also had a poll around the same time via survey monkey (see here). The poll is from Aug. 29 - Sept. 4 2016.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 19 points — 55 percent to 36 percent — among voters who are currently serving or have previously served in the U.S.
[...]
A sizable number of military and veteran voters say they would not be confident in Clinton or Trump's ability to be an effective commander-in-chief of the nation's military — but a slight majority would be confident in Trump (53 percent).

Militarytimes.com also had a poll (also online, and also unscientific like the military.com poll). The poll is from Nov. 10 - 14 2016.

The poll surveyed 2,790 active-duty troops. Among those who voted, 51 percent said they supported Trump.

They also had a number of previous polls (eg here or here). qz.com notes that the high percentage for Trump is mainly due to the demographic markup of the military (more men than women).

Fox News also had a poll. It did not ask active military personell, but veterans. The result was 46% for Trump, 34% for Clinton.

The claim that exit polls show 60% for Trump is correct. Looking at the military.com poll, the fact that many voted by mail would likely reduce that percentage, not increase it, as those currently active are more likely to need to vote by mail, and according to that poll, they are less likely to vote for Trump.

There do not seem to be any polls that are more recent than these.

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  • 2
    This useful answer would even better if it included the dates of the polls. It's possible to follow the links, but links are impermanent shifty things...
    – agc
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 4:46
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    Historically, the main divide has been between officers and enlisted men. Enlisted men tend to have the politics of a demographically similar slice of Americans or to be only slightly more conservative. Officers have tended to be extremely conservative with GOP v. Democratic shares (excluding don't know and don't answer) as much as 9-1 for which even a 3-1 would be a remarkably poor performance relative to historical trends.
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 19:02
  • See Time (2012) swampland.time.com/2012/11/05/… "between 1976 and 1996, the share of senior military officers identifying itself as Republican jumped from one-third to two-thirds, while those claiming to be moderates fell from 46% to 22%. Senior military officers who described themselves as liberal fell from 16% in 1976 to 3% in 1996."
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 19:13
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The Cooperative Congressional Election Study includes data which provides an insight into this. Looking at the most recent study available, 2018, we can split out respondents based on the following:

  • I am currently serving in the U.S. military - 368 respondents.
  • I have immediate family members currently serving in the U.S. military - 3812 respondents.
  • I previously served in the U.S. military but I am no longer active - 6768 respondents.
  • Members of my immediate family have served in the U.S. military but are no longer active - 23159 respondents
  • Neither myself nor any members of my immediate family have ever served in the U.S. military - 29659

If we then look at how these respondents reported voting in the 2016 Presidential Election, we can produce the following:

enter image description here

This clearly shows a preference for Trump among those with a military background, and a preference for Clinton with those who have none.

We can also look at how these groups responded when asked whether they approve of how Donald Trump is doing his job, this also reveals some interesting data:

enter image description here

This shows, again, a large difference in approval for Trump between those with a military background, and those without, but also a significant difference between those who have served or are serving in the military themselves, and those who just have their immediate family serving/previously having served.

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