According to a nationwide survey by AP VoteCast, almost 6 in 10 military veterans voted for Republican candidates in the November 2018 midterm elections. A similar percentage were supportive of President Donald Trump’s leadership.
The survey was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago and received responses from more than 115,000 midterm voters, 4,000 of which are current and former service members.
The poll results found that veterans overall (56 percent) approved of Trump’s job performance so far, with high approval for his handling of border security and his efforts to make America safer from foreign terrorism, according to AP News.
In contrast, 58 percent of female veterans were not supportive of Trump, a similar percentage to the amount of women who disapproved of his performance overall, 61 percent.
In addition, the survey found that voters who had not previously served in the military tended to disapprove Trump’s job performance than approve, at 58 and 42 percent, respectively.
Looking at the race and ethnicity of respondents who were veterans and nonveterans, 62 percent of White veterans approve of Trump versus 49 percent of White nonveterans, 53 percent of Latino veterans versus 28 percent of Latino nonveterans approved and 22 percent of African-American veterans approved versus 10 percent of African-American nonveterans.
In regards to the specifics of Trump’s leadership as U.S. President, the results found that veterans were more likely to say that he has a justified character to serve as president and are more likely to say that he cares about “people like you”.
Over 170 veterans were on the 2018 Midterm Election congressional ballot as major-party candidates. Ninety-six military veterans will begin serving as lawmakers in 2019, 66 identifying as Republican and 30 as Democrats.
In addition, results from the election showed that 18 veterans were elected to the House, the largest number of new veterans elected since 2010.
