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October 17, 2004
Democratic Men???
A lot of weird polls lately. Kerry leads Bush among men in the new Newsweek poll (what happened to their Southern voters breakout?) and trails among women. Odd, but...
In my limited experience looking at Georgia election history and opinion polling I've noticed an odd phenomenon. Many Georgia women are significantly more Republican than their male counterparts. I'm not sure how this can be explained, though I do have my non-scientific theories.
Another thing I've noticed is that younger males seem to be either at a parity or more Democratic than younger females. What gives? I used to think it might be social issues but I'm beginning to think it is draft politics.
Now, the Bush campaign may think it is unfair of me to drag them into this. After all, they are on record as not supporting a draft. But who plans for a draft? Nobody. It's kind of like a tax increase. So you have to ask yourself -- neither candidate wants a draft but it isn't exactly the type of thing you do because you want to, you do it because you have to.
So which candidate's policies would more likely lead to an unplanned draft? Well most voters think that Bush is more likely to start another war, and even if another war was an absolute necessity, Bush is less likely than Kerry to assemble a multilateral coalition to fight it. So that means more troops, and since the armed forces are currently over-stretched, that means some sort of drastic change in the equation to get those troops. I don't see Bush raising pay to recruit troops, it is against his ideology.
So that explains a possible male shift towards Kerry. But what about "draft moms." Maybe it's denial. Maybe "security" is winning out. Anyway, it's possible anyway that you'd have "draft dads" or "draft grandfathers" anyway. Men that are age 50-60 who are likely to have sons aged 18-25 have to know what that creeping feeling their sons are feeling is like. So maybe that explains this bizarre shift.
Of course, it could just be that with a race this close, you're just seeing some normal margin of error nuttiness. Or it could just be an outlier.
Posted by Chris at October 17, 2004 07:24 PM
Comments
Problem with the draft charge is this. Who is likely to reinstitute the draft? Kerry wants to add 40,000 people and has the support of only 25% of those already in uniform. Seems to me he would have a tough time keeping people in much less increasing the number in the service without a draft.
Posted by: goodspkr ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.chrisishardcore.com//nav-commenters.gif)
at October 18, 2004 10:04 AM
Read my post. One way to increase membership in the armed forces is to understand economics -- pay more for a dangerous line of work and more people will be willing to do that job. Despite beheadings we don't seem to have a problem finding contractors for Iraq -- probably because they can make up to $20K a month. It seems to me that Bush will not do this, since they've tried to cut so many benefits of soldiers since he's been in office.
As for the 25% number can you back this up. I only have anecdotal evidence to offer about national guardsmen and from what I'm told Bush's support among this group is closer to 0 than 75%.
And finally, how can you trust anything Bush says regarding foreign policy/Iraq? He's shown to be incapable of really planning and incurious as well. You may have a nagging feeling that you don't trust Kerry -- but Bush has a record of misleading Americans.
Posted by: chris at October 18, 2004 10:50 AM
Your anecdotal evidence of National Guard preference is not supported by recent polls. Both polls, summarized below, show strong military support for Bush. Both polls included National Guard in their survey.
If you only talk to people like you then you shouldn't be surprised that their views reinforce your own.
Poll 1 ------------
In the survey of more than 4,000 full-time and part-time troops, 73% said they would vote for Bush if the election were held today; 18% said they would vote for Kerry.
Poll 2 ------------
Military personnel and their families overwhelmingly favor President Bush over Sen. John Kerry, a new poll says.
More than two-thirds of service people surveyed by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Policy Center said they would trust Bush, who served in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, as their commander-in-chief more than Kerry.
The poll surveyed 655 active duty, National Guard and Reserve personnel and their families from Sept. 22 through Oct. 5 and had a sampling error of 4 percentage points.
Posted by: davenfl at October 21, 2004 08:07 AM
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