CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2024, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“’CALEXIT’ SENTIMENT MIGHT BE RISING”
The poll results this spring were startling: fully half of
America’s Republicans now believe California is in decline and 48 percent of
them think this state “is not really American.”
That translates to roughly one-fourth of all Americans
holding distinctly negative views about California. Those were the conclusions
of a survey taken for the Los Angeles Times.
But most Californians simply shrug their shoulders at this,
suggests another study that quickly followed. That one, by the political
polling firm YouGov, shows the vast majority of Californians thumb their noses
at anti-California sentiment, despite years of overblown talk about “the great
California exodus.”
Yes, the state has lost some population over the last 10
years, leading to the loss of one of its former 53 seats in the House of
Representatives. But the 52 remaining Californians in Congress still form by
far the largest state delegation, as about 12 percent of the nation’s people
continue to live here.
Most of those folks, despite the reality they could
drastically cut living expenses by moving elsewhere, have no intention of
leaving. What’s more, a significant number of Californians would be perfectly
happy for their state to leave the USA, if it were possible to do that
peacefully.
The second poll, financed by the Marin County-based
Independent California Institute, also indicated that 68 percent of
Californians believe they would be better off than they are now if the state
negotiated for itself a “special autonomous status within the U.S.” and
arranged for transfer of almost all federal land and water infrastructure here
to state and local governments. More than a supermajority, then, want at least
special standing.
No one should expect anything like quick action toward either
that or California seceding outright from the USA, however. For one thing, Gov.
Gavin Newsom will not hear of it. As early as 2018, during his first successful
run for governor, he said in an interview that secession is ridiculous, a
“non-starter.” That was before he became involved in presidential campaigning,
while he still denied any interest in the top national office.
In the new YouGov poll, 29 percent of Californians supported
secession, almost identical to the portion of Alaskans and Texans who would
like independence for their states.
But 60 percent of Californians believe the Civil War made it
impossible for either this state or any other to simply leave, even if some
presidential candidates (Donald Trump, for one) have indicated they actually
like the idea of a United States without California.
As long ago as 2017, Reuters/Ipsos and Stanford University
conducted polls that found about 30 percent of Californians supported Calexit,
one name for secession. So sentiment on that has not changed much over time.
But Independent California Institute director Coyote Marin
focused on the 68 percent who said they think they’d be better off separated in
some way from the rest of America. “Those are much higher numbers than found in
polls which simply asked if California should secede,” Marin said.
No one knows where such numbers might go if Trump were
elected this fall and quickly declared martial law, something he considered
attempting after his 2000 election defeat.
The YouGov survey also found that Californians are not nearly
as depressed about their state as outsiders. Fully 63 percent of the 500-plus
Californians polled in carefully structured sampling said they cannot imagine
wanting to live anywhere outside California.
That’s in stark contrast to the 40 percent of non-California
Republicans in the LA Times poll who said they don’t think California is even a
good place to visit.
There’s also the LA Times finding that half of all
Republicans nationally would be glad to vote California out of the Union, an
act that YouGov indicated would probably be welcomed by most Californians.
For now, this is all sheer speculation and talk, with no real
action on the horizon. But much depends on the November election outcome, which
could sharply shift both national attitudes about California and Californians’
feelings about remaining American.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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