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Bright Line Watch and YouGov released results of a nationwide poll that found citizen support for their state to separate from the US has been on the rise, with 37 percent showing a “willingness to secede.”
Support for secession was greatest in the south and amongst Republicans, with those numbers jumping from 50 percent to 66 percent between January and June.
“By this summer, we anticipated, political tempers may have cooled — not necessarily as a result of any great reconciliation but perhaps from sheer exhaustion after the relentless drama of Trump,” pollsters said.
The study, which asked the question “Would you support or oppose (your state) seceding from the United States to join a new union with (list of states in the new union) led to researchers breaking the states down into five distinct geographical locations that would form their own union.
- Pacific: California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alaska ;
- Mountain: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico ;
- South: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee;
- Heartland: Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska ;
- Northeast: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia.
In total, 2,750 Americans were polled during the survey, which was conducted between Wednesday, June 16 and Saturday, June 26.
A breakdown of how respondents in those five regions responded, broken down by political leanings, according to the study:
- Northeast: 39 percent of Democrats; 35 percent of Independents; 26 percent of Republicans support secession;
- Heartland: 19 percent of Democrats; 43 percent of Independents; 34 percent of Republicans;
- Mountain: 17 percent of Democrats; 35 percent of Independents; 43 percent of Republicans;
- Pacific: 47 percent of Democrats; 33 percent of Independents; 27 percent of Republicans;
- South: 20 percent of Democrats; 50 percent of Independents; 66 percent of Republicans.
“Yet rather than support for secession diminishing over the past six months, as we expected, it rose in every region and among nearly every partisan group,” they stated. "The jump is most dramatic where support was already highest (and has the greatest historical precedent) — among Republicans in the South.”
Bright Line Watch offered a caveat about the results of the study, noting that secession is “genuinely radical.”
“As in our previous report, we caution that this survey item reflects initial reactions by respondents about an issue that they are very unlikely to have considered carefully,” they noted. “Secession is a genuinely radical proposition and expressions of support in a survey may map only loosely onto willingness to act toward that end.
“We include the question because it taps into respondents’ commitments to the American political system at the highest level and with reference to a concrete alternative (regional unions).”
The complete results of the study can be found here.
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