Background of news –
Soldier votes and some statistics
By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports
From present indications, the number of men and women in the Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine will be around 11 million by Election Day, 1944. Of this total, perhaps 7.5 million will be outside the continental United States.
President Roosevelt, in his soldier-vote message to Congress Jan. 26, put the number overseas by Election Day as “more than five million,” but the President evidently slipped up on his mathematics, for that is the estimate given for the Army alone.
Of the 7.5 million overseas on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November 1944, perhaps 1,200,000 will be under 21 (Georgia is so far the only state which has reduced the voting age to 18). Perhaps another 300,000 will be non-citizens, so that the potential voting strength of the Armed Forces overseas will be in the neighborhood of six million.
That is only about 7% of the total potential voting population. It is slightly more than President Roosevelt’s popular majority over Wendell Willkie in 1940, considerably less than his majority over Alf M. Landon in 1936, slightly less than his majority over President Hoover in 1932.
Not likely to be decisive
Some of the six million soldiers eligible will certainly not bother to vote, whatever the facilities provided. Of those who do vote, the division among the two major party candidates is not likely to be much greater than 75–25. In other words, the overseas soldier vote could not decide the 1944 election unless the election should otherwise be considerably closer than the election of 1940, when almost 50 million ballots were cast for President.
From the above statistics, it appears that the overseas soldier vote is not likely to provide either major party presidential candidate a margin of more than 5% of the total vote cast. Under the electoral system of the United States, that must be broken down by states, to gauge its effect.
The Democrats are maintaining that most of the soldier vote will go to the Commander-in-Chief, so that if most of the soldiers are prevented from voting, the Democrats may charge that the election was stolen from them. However, the loss of 5% of his votes in 1940 would mean the loss of only four additional states from Mr. Roosevelt, if the Republican vote were the same as in 1940. These four states are among the largest in the Union – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Wisconsin – and together they account for 104 electoral votes.
Would have made no difference
Mr. Roosevelt received 449 electoral votes in 1940, and the loss of 104 would still leave him 345, considerably more than enough to elect. So, if the Democrats were to lose the 1944 election with most of the overseas soldiers not voting, the loss would be due only in part to the absence of soldier votes, much more to a shift of civilian votes away from the Democratic column since 1940.
Chairman Spangler of the Republican National Committee has reported that informal polls taken by his friends indicate that most soldiers overseas are inclined toward the Republican ticket. If that be true the Republican presidential candidate will suffer if most of the soldiers don’t vote.
The states, with their electoral votes, carried by Mr. Willkie in 1940 by less than a 5% margin were as follows:
Colorado | 6 |
Indiana | 14 |
Iowa | 11 |
Maine | 5 |
Michigan | 19 |
These five states accounted for about two-thirds of the total electoral vote for Mr. Willkie.