Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

It shows that while morale remains high, "support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the military's professional core." Those last few words are critical. As we will see the Military Times readership comes disproportionately from those who have made the military their career and - as the Military Times article correctly stresses - "should not be read as representative of the military as a whole." However, as a consistent, standardized sampling of opinion among the "professional core" of the military, it is worthy of our attention.

However, the response rate alone is less important than the possibility of any response bias. In other words, were the 70% who did not return their survey different from those who did, and if so, how different were they? That question is, of course next to impossible to answer or quantify, since as usual we know nothing about the non-respondents. However, the Military Times article includes this bit of information which should at least serve as a caution:

As in the previous two years, Military Times Poll respondents were reluctant to express opinions, even anonymously, about the commander in chief or his policies. About one in five refused to say whether they approved of the president's performance on Iraq or overall.
"That's my boss," Army Lt. Col. Earnestine Beatty said in a follow-up interview. "I can't comment." Kohn said he worried that asking such questions of military members and publishing the results could tarnish the military's image as a nonpartisan institution.

Whether any such reluctance affected the response rate or created any sort of response bias is, again, something we can only speculate about. However, Trowbridge points out that among respondents, the reluctance to answer questions was evident mostly on questions about George Bush, Congress or the military brass. On other questions, such as those about morale, the "don't know" percentages were in the single digits.

Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy. In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times Poll as a signal that military members were behind President Bush’s the president’s policy.

The poll also found diminished optimism that U.S. goals in Iraq can be accomplished, and a somewhat smaller drop in support for the decision to go to war in 2003.

• Positive feelings about Congress, civilian and uniformed Pentagon leaders and the media all fell.

• Respondents also were less likely than in the past to believe other segments of the country viewed the military favorably. In 2004, 37 percent said civilians viewed the military very favorably; that fell to 24 percent this year. Last year, 77 percent said politicians saw the military very or somewhat favorably; 63 percent said so this year.

• There was somewhat more support for opening military service to openly homosexual Americans: 59 percent said open homosexuals should not be allowed to serve, down six points from last year.

• Opposition to the draft fell slightly, from 75 percent last year to 68 percent this year.

• Nearly two-thirds said the military is stretched too thin to be effective, though that figure is down substantially from two years ago.

• Job satisfaction and approval of pay, health benefits, training and equipment remain high — though in many cases, the support is less enthusiastic than in past years, based on responses.

• For the first time in the three-year history of the poll, more than half of respondents said they had deployed in support of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But few of those shifts appear as significant as those on the president.