 If Trump pushes his margin among veterans back up by 7%, he wins Wisconsin and Michigan easily and closes the gap significantly in Pennsylvania as well as other swing states. Veterans are a seldom-studied subgroup of politics, and J.D. Vance, when Trump announces his vice presidential pick, speaks to them as an enlisted man, a former Marine Corps grunt who spelled out at length the role of the Corps in making the man in his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.