By and large, the military thinks Trump and Clinton are total losers

American military personnel favor Donald Trump for president over Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin in an exclusive survey conducted by Military Times ahead of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, but a strong majority of respondents say they are wholly unimpressed with both candidates.

More than 61 percent indicated they are "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with Trump as the Republican nominee, including 28 percent of those who intend to vote for him. More than 82 percent said the same about Clinton, the Democratic nominee, with 30 percent of those pledging to vote for her voicing displeasure with the choice.

"This is the worst presidential election I have ever seen," said one Air Force master sergeant who responded to the survey. "How in the world could we only have Hillary and Trump as the options?"

Such displeasure reflects the candidates’ high unfavorability ratings among the American public at large, despite both convincingly winning their party’s primary contests. More than half of registered voters in a recent New York Times/CBS poll had negative views of Trump (55 percent) and Clinton (52 percent).

The survey, conducted July 5-8, elicited responses from 1,915 active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel, all of them Military Times subscribers. The results, while not a scientific sampling of the military as a whole (see our methodology below), is representative of the services' more senior and career-oriented members, those who run the military's day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.

Among the Military Times survey respondents, 23 percent said they intend to vote for a third-party candidate. That’s almost 3 percentage points higher than those who said they’ll vote for Clinton, and about half the 49 percent who say they’ll back Trump.

Nearly 7 percent said they don’t intend to vote at all.
With four months remaining before the November election, these results raise troubling questions as to whether Trump or Clinton will win the military's support as commander in chief. The vast majority of service members intend to cast a vote and believe everyone should do so. Nearly two-thirds of the troops surveyed (63 percent) said it would be wrong to abstain from voting. But the reality is many who will cast a ballot won’t be truly happy with their choice.

“Troops and veterans do believe in exercising their civic duties, and I think many of them will, despite the fact they’ve been given two terrible choices,” said John Noonan, an Air Force veteran and national security advisor for two prior Republican presidential hopefuls, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “I think if most troops did what she did (with classified emails), they’d be tossed in the brig. And his entire national security policy relies on an unrealistic border wall.”