{"id":245,"date":"2008-10-29T16:15:25","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T16:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html"},"modified":"2008-10-29T16:15:25","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T16:15:25","slug":"mccain-obama-and-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html","title":{"rendered":"McCain, Obama, and the Military"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Which candidate for president enjoys the most support among the military, active and retired?<br \/>\nThe <em>Military Times<\/em> recently released the results of a poll of their readership (Active Duty military, Reserve-National Guard members, and &#8220;military retirees&#8221;). They found that among &#8220;Active Duty&#8221; military John McCain enjoyed a clear advantage over Barack Obama (67% to 24%). McCain&#8217;s advantage over Obama was even larger among &#8220;Guard &amp; Reserve&#8221; members (71% to 21%) and &#8220;Retirees&#8221; (72% to 20%).<br \/>\nSenator McCain&#8217;s advantage among present and past members of the military proved to be pervasive across service boundaries: Army (68% to 23%), Navy (69% to 24%), Air Force (67% to 24%) and Marine Corps (75% to 18%). Senator McCain also enjoyed similarly high levels of support from both enlisted (67% to 24%) and officers (70% to 22%).<br \/>\nThe age of the service members did not appear to diminish Senator McCain&#8217;s level of support vs. Senator Obama&#8217;s. Among service members 18-34 years of age, McCain enjoyed a 65% to 27% advantage, and among those 35 and older, it was McCain (70%) and Obama (21%).<br \/>\nThe only two groups that departed from the pervasive support McCain garnered from the military were women and African-Americans. Among women service members McCain was favored by only 53% to 36% over Obama, a drop of 15% from his support among all service personnel.<br \/>\nAfrican-American service members, however, provided the most dramatic departure among the military in terms of support for Senator Obama. African-American service personnel supported Obama over McCain 79% to 12%. By comparison, among Hispanic service members, support for McCain was 63% to 27% for Obama.<br \/>\nThose numbers reflect the fact that African-Americans are providing overwhelming support for Senator Obama this election cycle. Polls show that African-Americans are registering and planning to vote in record numbers for Senator Obama. The startling dissonance between African-American service members&#8217; voting preference vs. their fellow service members&#8217; reflects this larger societal trend.<br \/>\nThere is a another phenomenon in American presidential elections that is analogous to this phenomenon. In 1960 John F. Kennedy benefited greatly from being a Roman Catholic. Although his faith was considered quite controversial, in the end he received almost the same number of votes from Protestants (who were thought to have grave reservations about his Catholicism) that previous Democratic presidential candidates had received. However, Kennedy received unprecedented and overwhelming support from the Catholic community, similar to the support Obama is currently receiving from the African-American community.<br \/>\nIn other words, being Catholic helped Kennedy win and Obama&#8217;s ethnicity is benefitting him similarly in the 2008 election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Which candidate for president enjoys the most support among the military, active and retired? The Military Times recently released the results of a poll of their readership (Active Duty military, Reserve-National Guard members, and &#8220;military retirees&#8221;). They found that among &#8220;Active Duty&#8221; military John McCain enjoyed a clear advantage over Barack Obama (67% to 24%).&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>McCain, Obama, and the Military - Casting Stones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McCain, Obama, and the Military - Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Which candidate for president enjoys the most support among the military, active and retired? The Military Times recently released the results of a poll of their readership (Active Duty military, Reserve-National Guard members, and &#8220;military retirees&#8221;). They found that among &#8220;Active Duty&#8221; military John McCain enjoyed a clear advantage over Barack Obama (67% to 24%).&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-29T16:15:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dr. Richard Land\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"McCain, Obama, and the Military - Casting Stones","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"McCain, Obama, and the Military - Casting Stones","og_description":"Which candidate for president enjoys the most support among the military, active and retired? The Military Times recently released the results of a poll of their readership (Active Duty military, Reserve-National Guard members, and &#8220;military retirees&#8221;). They found that among &#8220;Active Duty&#8221; military John McCain enjoyed a clear advantage over Barack Obama (67% to 24%).&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html","og_site_name":"Casting Stones","article_published_time":"2008-10-29T16:15:25+00:00","author":"Dr. Richard Land","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html","name":"McCain, Obama, and the Military - Casting Stones","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-29T16:15:25+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-29T16:15:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/10\/mccain-obama-and-the-military.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"McCain, Obama, and the Military"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/","name":"Casting Stones","description":"Casting Stones","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429","name":"Dr. Richard Land","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","caption":"Dr. Richard Land"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/author\/jmartin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}