Polls and Precision Strikes: Electoral Origins of High‐Tech Warfighting

ABSTRACT How do domestic politics influence the conduct of war? Conventional wisdom suggests that politicians select into war and military institutions fight them with some independence. This article argues that domestic political considerations, namely electoral vulnerability, significantly shape how wars are fought. We posit that American presidents facing electoral risks intensify their control over military operations, prioritizing politically safer approaches that afford greater operational oversight, control over optics, and casualty aversion. Insofar as high‐tech military platforms, such as drone strikes and precision munitions, minimize the military footprint and can fall directly under executive discretion, we theorize that presidents perceive them as politically safer. Using a new data set capturing the means of force employed in United States military operations from 1989 to 2021, we provide robust evidence that political vulnerability—measured by presidential disapproval and proximity to elections—correlates with high‐tech warfare. These findings contribute to scholarship on public opinion in foreign policy, democratic warfighting, diversionary theory, civil‐military relations, and the politics of emerging technologies, demonstrating that electoral constraints systematically influence the employment of force in ongoing conflicts.