While I haven't really done much in the way of research into this, I was struck recently by the circumstances of the Florida vote, and the danger of alienating a consituency, even one as small as the military (and a voting block that represents less than 1% of the American population is small indeed). With this being election time, quite a few conversations on politics have cropped up of late. Not shockingly, it turns out that the accepted (not officially, but certainly socially) overt political stance is deeply conservative. A lot of that is due to common conservative tenents, like respect for traditions or religious service (although ask people to donate money to military causes, and suddenly people are much less than their brother's keeper). But no small part of it is due to uniquely military issues, and for this Democrats are fighting a long up-hill battle. Between Carter and Clinton, quite a few here think that Democrats have a lot for which to answer.
The Clinton downsizings and budget cuts deeply hurt the military, and anecdotes about having to save 550 cord (high tensile parachute cord used for almost everything) or being unable to find 100 mph tape (duct tape, also used for almost everything). Of soldiers in the Ranger regiments, which are the chosen ones of the Army, capable of obtaining almost everything because of how kickass they are, having to ration bullets or of walking miles to the range just to zero their weapons. (For the non-Army: shooting skills are highly perishable, and for a unit like the Rangers, kickass commando types, maintaining those skills is one of their highest training priorities, so anything which interferes with that training degrades a defining capability of the unit.)
Beyond the budget cuts, Clinton's behavior in office and treatment of the military left scars many still won't forgive. Because Special Forces is closely affiliated the Rangers, almost everyone here was either a Somali Ranger or very good friends with one (one of our training cadre ran the Mogadishu Mile). Accordingly, Clinton's decision to vacate Somalia infuriated a lot of people within the Special Operations community. Rules of Engagement during the 1990s presented a lot of people who were sent into harms way with numerous untenable choices. The classic example was that soldiers confronted with an individual weilding a weapon and obviously intending to fire at US troops could not fire first. There are grounds for merit in the ROE, but for a soldier, the prospect of having to wait to see if you had been shot before you could resolve the threat to your person is deeply unsettling (read: fucking terrifying and frustrating).
So, to bring this about to my point, it occured to me that the Florida recount had literal tons of unopened absentee ballots from overseas military personnel. While there were certainly copious amounts of under- and over-voted ballots that needed counting from indigenous Floridians, razor-thin margins of 500 people are small enough for even the military to have its say. I doubt those absentee ballots were sufficient to be decisive on their own, but still it presents at least the illusion that the rank and file can participate in elections, and perhaps have their voices be heard. With only 1.2 million people under uniform, that voice is far from audible.
