Texas and California poll in favor of a "National Divorce"

Completely revised Oct 10 for deeper analysis, including Florida!

We analyzed the state-by-state results of a June poll by YouGov/Bright Line that asked Southern residents if they wanted the South to secede, and asked West Coast (with Alaska and Hawaii) residents if they wanted their region to secede. This poll found 29% of all US residents wanted their region to secede in early February, and 37% in June. A UVa poll conducted in late July showed that 41% of Biden and 52% of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union. This equates to 46% of voters.

The July poll may be higher than the June poll because they asked 6 weeks later (that's a long time, as Biden keeps issuing mandates). Differences in procedure between the polls should not make such a big difference. Another possibility is that the questions were different: perhaps the South would prefer to secede along with other red states, not alone, and vice-versa. The West Coast might want to join other blue states rather than going it alone, since most Dems prefer centralization, not states' rights. (In the case of Texas, there are some Texans who don't want Texas to be in a union with any other states.)

Although the June poll polled voters and non-voters, our tabulation of their raw data shows that the Biden voters were 24.6% in favor of their region seceding, and Trump voters were 44.4% in favor. Non-voters were 51.1% in favor! One of the differences between the June poll and the July poll was that the July poll didn't include non-voters. Apparently, it would have had even higher results if it had included them.

Non-voters were only 16% of the respondents of the June poll, even though 46.7% of the US population did not vote for either candidate. Presumably the poll under counted non-voters because they don't like to answer political polls, and the June poll had a long questionnaire, like most polls. Perhaps the non-voters who did answer that poll are not very representative of non-voters in general, so maybe it would be a bad idea to give their opinions extra weight to make up for the lack of non-voters in the poll. Some states lean so heavily to one party that there is little reason to vote in most elections there. But some non-voters are simply not interested in politics or confident in their own opinions.

The difference between Biden voters being 24.6% in favor in June and 41% in favor in July is 16.4 percentage points, a 66% increase. The difference between Trump voters being 44.4% in favor in June and 52% in favor in July is 7.6 percentage points, a 17% increase. Judging by voters alone, the average state was about 12 percentage points more in favor of secession in July than in June, a 25% increase.

But we can estimate the increase for each state separately depending on the election results of that state, since support from Biden voters increased faster than support from Trump voters. For the July results in the table below, we added 7.6 percentage points or 16.4 percentage points in proportion to the Trump/Biden ratio of the state. We are presenting our own estimates because the July poll raw data is not available and it was not statistically significant for individual states.

As you can see, California, Texas, and Florida voters seem to be in favor of secession as of July 2021, but we can't be sure about other states because not enough people were polled in those states. A poll should have at least 200 respondents. We didn't bother to look at states that are landlocked, because our interest is in which state might lead the secession movement. Probably, support for national divorce is strongest in some of the inland states. The poll only had 14 respondents from Idaho.

Since the June poll found that Republicans in the South are 2/3 in favor of seceding (and only 20% of Dems there), then Southern states that are in the control of Republicans should have the political support necessary to declare independence in their ruling parties. The June poll also found that on the West Coast, Dems are almost twice as likely to support secession of the West Coast as compared to Republicans, and those states are under the control of Dems. So Oregon and California should have the support they need to secede in their ruling parties.

A problem is that most of the poll respondents who were opposed were "strongly" opposed, but most of the proponents are "somewhat" in favor. The debate over this idea is still in its infancy. Most op-eds about it are advancing objections that could be easily disproved or discounted. We are in a critical period in the history of this idea, where people are open to being persuaded and need to learn more about why secession is the most pragmatic solution to the disaster we're approaching. Share our substack.

Another problem is that the secession movement has very few activists and very little financial support. The Texas Nationalist Movement needs many more signature collectors to force a question about Texas independence onto the primary ballot. The deadline is coming up very fast.

The most surprising number in this table is Florida 52% in favor. Perhaps Florida could leave southeastern Florida in the USA, and secede without it. Orlando could also be left behind, with a bit of beach on the east coast, as shown below. This would leave Florida with 1.9 Trump voters per Hillary voter.

In prior years, we had feared that Dem support for splitting the country would wane as they cemented control over the US, but they actually seem to be getting more impatient about not getting what they want immediately. Their expectations keep increasing, so their dissatisfaction is still increasing. Secession in 1860/1861 would have been peaceful if both geographical areas had been in favor of splitting the country. Let it be so in our decade.

If you want to tabulate the percentage for your state, the raw data for the poll is here. But only 2 states had more than 200 respondents.

Our introduction to the idea of splitting the US is here. We discuss the status of secession movements here.