by Mohamed Younis
Story Highlights
- Public confidence in the U.S. military continues to decline
- Drops seen across party groups, but Republicans remain most confident
- Independents least likely to express confidence this year
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans are now less likely to express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. military, with a noticeable decline that has persisted for the past five years. The latest numbers are from a June 1-22 Gallup poll that also captured record lows in public confidence in several public institutions.
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The wording of this question is strange.
What do they mean by “confidence”?
Confidence that they could utterly obliterate any other military on the planet? There is no question that the US military is miles aheead of any one else.
Confidence that our military leaders have democracy and the nation’s best interests at heart? That’s far more cloudy seeing as I think many realize that a LOT of people in the military are conservative and I have zero doubt that at least some of them are compromised and are MAGAt-loyalists.
Confidence that our military spending is helping bankrupt the country? Extremely confident in that.
Confidence in thinking that we jump to start pointless wars simply because it is so easy for us to do so? Also extremely confident in that. If all you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail.
Define confidence.
Exactly, if anything I have too much confidence in the American military
This might be the first quote from my quantitative and qualitative research methods MA course I’ve ever been able to use in public. I asked that question back in 2018 after we did an independent study of government post 2016 (Trump Administration).
Agreed on all counts. The question is way too abstract to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. I don’t even know why they would bother posing the question or printing the results. Everything about the original is just meaningless.
Welcome to modern “journalism”.
Gallup has asked the exact same question since 1975.
I agree, but maybe the ambiguity and subjectivity of the word “confidence” is the point.
It’s like when researchers measure the “happiest country in the world.” Happiness is subjective, but that’s the whole point. Whatever makes you happy is happiness and an objective, rigid definition would compromise the research. Maybe it’s the same with “confidence”?
I think a few of us are on the same page that it is purposefully vague, but that vagueness also makes the results nearly meaningless. Maybe not totally, but far more than if they had specific questions.
It’s not necessarily meaningless as there’s value in tracking the change in the measure. Even if the objective measure is not as useful.
It’s an open-ended opinion question.
That’s the way I see it, but if you do that, then the results you get will be nearly meaningless.