The Pentagon extended a special offer to its enlisted members to help them vote in the coming midterms, but according to a new breakdown from MS NOW, the gesture could very well have the opposite of its intended impact and blow up in President Donald Trump’s face.
In a piece published Tuesday morning, MS NOW’s Priya Sridhar and Peggy Helman detailed the new initiative in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been granting officers days off to vote in the fast-approaching midterms and urging them to take advantage of the offers to cast their ballots. The piece argued, however, that “those votes may not help Republicans as much as Hegseth would like,” noting that “historically low voter turnout among active-duty military members and frustrations over the war with Iran may put a damper on Hegseth’s hopes for how the military will vote — if its members vote at all.”
“Military voters have largely been characterized as a constituency highly favorable to Republicans, but that isn’t necessarily the case, given how few service members actually cast ballots,” the outlet noted. “Support for Republicans might be lower than Hegseth hopes when low turnout combined with slim margins are taken into consideration.”
“Would he [Hegseth] do this if he thought that it was just about soldiers getting to vote and if he didn’t have some idea of which way they might go?” Jason Dempsey, an Army veteran and professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, “who specializes in military demographics and civil-military relations,” told MS NOW. “He’s just not somebody who respects the normal processes and the independence of the military.”
Dempsey added further: “The key with the military is always, they come from the American public and so they bring the predispositions and proclivities towards politics that their fellow citizens do.”
Gender and race, Dempsey explained, have a far greater impact on how military members tend to vote than their status as military members. Only senior officers tend to have a greater than average proclivity towards Republicans. Given that 20 percent of the service are Black, greater than the general public breakdown, there is a strong likelihood that military voters could break further for the Democrats that Black voters tend to support more often.
“This November’s elections come as service members are also raising a growing list of concerns about Hegseth’s and Trump’s leadership and directives, including the rise of Christian nationalism within the Pentagon, Trump’s use of the National Guard in cities across the U.S. and possibly illegal orders in military campaigns,” the report added. “And as Trump and Hegseth continue to send troops to the Middle East on record-breaking deployments, the administration’s policies could become a motivating force for troops who might otherwise sit out the election.”
“They want to follow leaders, and they want to do what they’re told, and they’re strong believers in defense and will go on deployments, but they just don’t believe that the leaders know what they’re doing,” retired Navy Capt. Donald Inbody told the outlet.