… In August, Gallup published an extensive study on the roots of Donald J. Trump’s support. While the study made waves for complicating the narrative that Mr. Trump’s voters were motivated purely by economic anxiety, one of the paper’s conclusions received little attention: that Mr. Trump draws heavily from veterans and their relatives. …
The Pew Research Center found that while a majority of older Americans had some family ties to the military, only a third of 18- to 29-year-olds did. This is partly geographic: The military relies heavily on recruits from rural areas and the South. Kids from the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, on the other hand, volunteer for service much less frequently.
But it’s also about class: Both extremely high- and low-income families are underrepresented, making military service especially common among the working- and middle-class voters who form the core of the Republican Party. CONT.
J. D. Vance, New York Times