| "(...) America has been at war continuously for over 15 years, but few Americans seem to notice. This is because the vast majority of citizens have no direct connection to those soldiers fighting,
dying, and returning wounded from combat. Increasingly, a divide is emerging between
communities whose young people are dying to defend the country, and those communities whose
young people are not. In this paper we empirically explore whether this divide—the casualty
gap—contributed to Donald Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016. The data analysis
presented in this working paper finds that indeed, in the 2016 election Trump was speaking to
this forgotten part of America. Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative
explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a
community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Our statistical model suggests
that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had
suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and
sent Hillary Clinton to the White House. There are many implications of our findings, but none
as important as what this means for Trump’s foreign policy. If Trump wants to win again in
2020, his electoral fate may well rest on the administration’s approach to the human costs of war. (...)" |
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