Secession attempts around the world have been quite a bust recently. With Scotland failing to part from the United Kingdom last month, several petitions to secede in California, Colorado and Maryland have also failed to make an impact. But the constant struggle seems to have generated conversation about secession in the United States.
In a new Fox News national poll, only nine percent of voters said they would support their state splitting off from the United States.
However, when asked if they had the option to boot other states out of the union, nearly twice as many respondents, 17 percent, supported the idea. If voters responded "yes," they were asked to list any number of states they wanted.
Of the respondents willing to kick out a state, 53 percent chose California. Following the Golden State with 25 percent of the votes was New York. In third place for removal was Texas (20 percent) followed by Florida (11 percent), according to Syracuse.
Specifically, presidential politics seemed to be a major factor in sharply dividing voters along party lines, said Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News poll with Republican pollster Darn Shaw.
"The top four states targeted for expulsion," he observed, "are also the four most electorally rich states in the country."
Analyzing the poll results shows exactly how the parties would divide the country. For instance, Republicans (21 percent) are more likely than Democrats (13 percent) to want to vote a state out of the union.
"In addition, Republicans (12 percent) and independents (13 percent) are three times as likely as Democrats (4 percent) to want their state to secede. Nearly one in four voters who are part of the Tea Party movement would vote for their state to split off (23 percent)," according to Fox News.
The poll was based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,049 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from September 28-30, 2014. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
