President Donald Trump received a loud ovation when he participated in the coin toss ahead of Saturday’s Army-Navy football rivalry game in Philadelphia. But troops’ actual feelings about the commander in chief appear much more ambivalent in the latest Military Times survey.
Half of active-duty military personnel contacted in the poll held an unfavorable view of President Trump, showing a continued decline in his approval rating since he was elected in 2016.
Trump’s 42 percent approval in the latest poll, conducted from Oct. 23 to Dec. 2, sets his lowest mark in the survey since being elected president. Some 50 percent of troops said they had an unfavorable view of him. By comparison, just a few weeks after his electoral victory in November 2016, 46 percent of troops surveyed had a positive view of the businessman-turned-politician, and 37 percent had a negative opinion.
But the latest numbers still leave Trump with a higher approval rating than former President Barack Obama when he left office in January 2017.
The numbers also show that Trump remains slightly more popular in the military community than among the American public as a whole. The latest Gallup poll had the president’s disapproval rating among the public at 54 percent, and his approval at 43 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,630 active-duty Military Times subscribers in partnership with the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University.
The numbers likely reflect a more career-minded subset of the military than the force as a whole, according to Peter Feaver, a former White House adviser to former President George W. Bush who is now a political science professor at Duke University.
“These are people for whom the morals and standards of the military mean a lot,” he said. “The president has criticized those same career workers in the State Department and other agencies. So, it’s possible they are more likely to be offended by the president than other parts of the military.”
Still, Feaver said, the drop in Trump’s popularity in the poll (conducted with the same parameters over the past four years) indicates growing dissatisfaction with Trump and his handling of several military issues.
When asked specifically about Trump’s handling of military issues, nearly 48 percent of the troops surveyed said they had an unfavorable view of that part of his job, compared to 44 percent who believe he has handled that task well.
That marks a significant drop from the 2018 Military Times poll, when 59 percent said they were happy with his handling of military issues, against 20 percent who had an unfavorable view.
In the time since the 2018 poll, Trump fired his popular former defense secretary, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis.
Trump also ordered a controversial and sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, and became the subject of impeachment hearings in the House over the delay of military assistance funding to Ukraine.
Also, in the days before the poll closed in December, Trump made the controversial decision to grant clemency to three warfighters accused of war crimes, a move that was opposed by many military leaders at the Pentagon.
“Over time, as the president has been involved with more controversial things connected to the military — whether it’s the border wall or the pardons or the way that Secretary Mattis left — that has changed the view of him,” said retired Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, who worked as a department spokesman during both the administrations of Trump and Obama.
“And they’ve seen more indications that he hasn’t been a great commander in chief. So, they’re moving closer to where the rest of the public is.”
Similar to past surveys, this poll showed significant gaps in views of the president among various subsets of the military.
Trump is far more popular with enlisted service members than with officers.
Among the enlisted force, the recent survey showed a 43 percent favorable rating.
For officers, however, only one-third responded with a positive view.
Military men appear to be more supportive of Trump compared to military women.
Among men, the survey shows a 43 percent favorable view, while among women service members, 53 percent of women expressed a “very unfavorable” rating of Trump and 56 percent responded negatively.
The survey also shows a gap among white and non-white service members.
Among whites, 46 percent of troops had a favorable view of the president, versus 45 percent with an unfavorable view.
Yet among non-white service members nearly two-thirds responded with a negative view of him.
Military and veteran voters overwhelmingly backed Trump in the 2016 election, according to exit polls.
And even with the dip in his popularity shown in the recent Military Times poll, Trump’s support among troops remains higher than his predecessor when he left office.
When Obama left office in January 2017, a Military Times poll showed that 52 percent of troops had a negative opinion of him, against 36 percent with a positive opinion.