This is my exact story to a "t". I grew up in a heavily conservative household, joined the military as a conservative, and 15 years later I'm pretty fucking blue.

I think it's a combination of a few things that does it to us more often than not:

1 - Exposure to people from all walks of life/escaping your "bubble" 2 - Access to tax payer funded social programs that the rest of America desperately fucking needs and going "Why can't taxes do this for EVERYONE!?" 3 - If you've been deployed to certain sections of the world, you see first-hand what unfettered religious extremism can potentially do to a country.

I'm happy to say, that at least for the Air Force, I've run into far, far more Active Duty Dems/Libs than I have any Repubs. Now, when the retired veteran GS employees come in, it's a completely different story. My whole circle save one is fairly left-leaning, and the one who isnt is...fucking weird/all over the place on his stances.

Every single person I know who has gotten out of the military has come out blue. With one (medically discharged) exception.

In my experience 20 years ago, it was mostly split between people who didn't care or at least didn't talk politics (the majority) and people who were very loud in thinking a Democrat would reduce the pay of enlisted service members.

I'm sure conservatives would love this, but we should be using the military in this way as a de-radicalizing force. We should be leaning into it.

30% of your time being red. 30% of your time coming to your senses. 40% of your time trending towards borderline radical blue.

There is your 60/40 split.

Anecdotally, this was somewhat my experience as well, except my parents didn’t talk politics much and they certainly didn’t show the extreme hate towards the left that fox and rush have since incited. I went more from voting on surface level attributes (speaking ability, apparent warmth, etc) and social pressure, to actually [eventually] looking at policy. I was a registered independent when I joined, but I didn’t know enough about actual politics to understand the details of what I was voting for. I.e., I was going with the flow. It has the same effect at the ballot box though.

Well put.

I think a lot of your political beliefs start with your parents and people around you, but then are shaped by what happens to you. If you get hit with the hard reality of life in some way (debt, health, etc) it tends to push you to be more progressive/empathetic toward others because you see just how truly cold and cruel the bottom of our society gets treated. If you have coasted through life and have parents and friends supporting you financially and we're lucky enough to get a good job and have relatively good health and such then you may not know the horrors of what can happen if you hit a few rough patches.

Similarly in military service, if you get injured and now have to go to the VA and fight to receive the most basic of medical care you were promised and denied it tends to push you left/progressive because you want things to be better. If you are still in the service or left it relatively undamaged then you could easily still see things from a conservative and right leaning perspective.

When you or people close to you get (denied medical care, denied housing, denied work, pushed into poverty and/or homelessness, used by the system and then discarded like trash) you tend to see things more progressive and want to provide some basic levels of support and humanity and empathy toward others as opposed to exploiting them for profit.

what was the red/blue percent (in your opinion) if you only included officers and above?