By AZ Mirror
Nearly one in four Arizona Republicans think the Grand Canyon State should secede from the United States, a recent poll found.
Online pollster YouGov surveyed more than 35,000 U.S. adults in 46 states earlier this month and found that just about a quarter of Americans said they would support their state seceding, ranging from less than 10% in Connecticut to 36% in Alaska.
There are some pretty obvious trends in the data, chief among them that “larger” states — be that in population or geography — are the most willing to secede. Alaska leads the way with 36%, followed by 31% in Texas and 29% in California.
And that desire for secession is driven by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, who overwhelmingly are more supportive of seceding across the country. (New Jersey was the only state where Democrats were more in favor of secession than Republicans, 17% to 16%.)
With 18% of respondents favoring secession, Arizona ranks No. 22 among the 33 states in which at least 100 Democrats and 100 Republicans were polled. While just 12% of Grand Canyon State Democrats backed leaving the Union, 23% of Republicans wanted to ditch the other 49 states.
But Arizonans are much more likely to root for another state to secede. YouGov also asked respondents if there was a state besides their own that they would support seceding from the U.S., and 31% said there was. Only 12 of the 46 states polled had more residents who wanted another state to secede, led by 37% of New Hampshire adults.
Curiously, more Arizonans want to see another state secede than actually believe there is a constitutional right to secession. Nationally, 26% of Americans said there was such a constitutional right — an assertion that many legal scholars say is flat wrong — and about 23% of Arizona respondents agreed.
One glaring omission from the poll is why so many people, and particularly Republicans, want to leave the great American experiment behind.
