Almost 1 in 4 Arizona Republicans wants to secede from the U.S.

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 one. 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.

This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.