Poll: Troops doubt next president can fix their top issues

Many servicemembers have serious doubts that the next commander in chief will be able to handle the biggest military and veterans issues facing the country, even if their pick for president wins.

According to results from the Military Times/Institute for Military and Veterans Families Poll conducted last week, roughly one third of active-duty troops voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton don’t think she’s the best candidate to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs or address veterans suicide.

Almost 60 percent of her supporters don’t think she’s the best candidate to reduce special interest influence in government.

On the other end of the political spectrum, more than half of servicemembers backing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump don’t think he’s the best option among the candidates to deal with sexual assault in the ranks. One in five of troops voting for him in November say he has a poor understanding of military affairs and issues.

And among all active-duty troops polled, 10 percent think that none of the four top presidential candidates is a good choice to defend the country from future terrorist attacks.

More troops surveyed saw Trump as the best choice to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs (44 percent), handle immigration policy (46 percent) and improve economic conditions in America (46 percent).

Clinton was the top pick for the candidate best able to address military sexual assault (27 percent) and essentially tied with Trump on the question of who was best to handle issues of race (24 percent to Trump’s 25 percent).

About 13 percent of troops surveyed said that none of the candidates was a good pick to prevent veterans’ suicide, which number 20 a day according to the latest VA statistics. Roughly 12 percent had confidence in any of the candidates making wise foreign policy decisions.

Election Day is Nov. 8, although a sizable portion of military voters will cast their vote before then though absentee ballots due to deployments or assignments outside their home states.

OUR METHODOLOGY

Between Oct. 12 and 14, Military Times and IVMF conducted a voluntary, confidential online survey of U.S. service members. The questions focused on the nation's current political climate, the 2016 presidential election and other relevant issues.

The survey received 2,486 responses from active-duty troops. A standard methodology was used by IVMF analysts to estimate the weights for each individual observation of the survey sample. The margin of error for the candidate issue questions is about 2 percent. Other questions had slightly higher margins of error.

The survey audience was 85 percent male and 15 percent female, and had a mean age of 29 years old. The respondents identified themselves as 70 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic, 8 percent African American, 4 percent Asian and 8 percent other ethnicities. Respondents were able to select more than one race.