A new, unscientific survey by Military Times of active-duty service personnel shows that the troops prefer Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-1 margin.

About 1 in 5 of those surveyed responded that if those were the two choices in November, they wouldn't vote.

In a new survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members' preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin. However, in the latest Military Times election survey, more than one in five troops said they’d rather not vote in November if they have to choose between just those two candidates.

But given only those choices, 21 percent of the service members surveyed said they would abstain from voting.More than 54 percent of the 951 troops Military Times surveyed said they would vote for Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, over Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Only about 25 percent said they would vote for Clinton in that matchup.

The results, while not a scientific sampling of military voting patterns (see our methodology below), show strong support for Trump among troops despite critics' attacks that he lacks foreign policy or national security experience.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders fared slightly better than Clinton in a similar head-to-head matchup with Trump, but still trailed the reality TV star and business mogul by a 51 percent to 38 percent margin. About one in 10 military members said they would not vote at all given those two candidates.

Military personnel also demonstrated strong support for Trump in a Military Times reader survey conducted in March. Trump was the most popular candidate among the six presidential candidates remaining then, and the clear choice among Republican service members.

Does the fact that Trump is more of an isolationist and would be less likely to get us involved in an overseas conflict make a difference to our troops?  For some, perhaps.  But Trump has promised to raise defense spending in response to the terrible state of readiness of our military.  You would think that would matter more to our soldiers rather than whether Hillary Clinton would be more eager to use military force than Trump.

The military has promised to improve the absentee voter procedure so that the votes of our men and women overseas will be counted this time.  It is widely believed that many military ballots from 2012 were never counted due to their late arrival.  Participation by active-duty military personnel in the 2012 election was at an all-time low.

Mitt Romney also enjoyed a huge advantage in the 2012 election with our troops.  Trump should get a boost from our military in swing states, where the election promises to be close.