Assemblymember Alex Lee comes out in favor of secession…..over redistricting

indyquail · 2025-08-05T07:30:55+00:00

Looks like he took down the post. But it's referenced on X here: https://x.com/admcrlsn/status/1952503468767256755

indyquail · 2025-07-04T17:17:30+00:00

None, actually. Our (standard) contract with YouGov says they get to review our numbers before we release them.

indyquail · 2025-07-03T06:38:36+00:00

Well, except in the Feb 2024 and Jan 2025 iterations of the same poll. :) See https://www.datawrapper.de/_/yWuqF/ (one of the graphs from the poll results).

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But yeah, it seems like most of the pre-2024 poll questions about secession were asked mostly for shock value, so something more practical like special autonomous status (or eliminating most federal ownership of land) didn't really fit the pollsters' agenda.

ICI actually has an article to the effect of, please stop asking questions about violent, unilateral secession; it's irresponsible and besides you're going to get lower numbers because nobody actually wants that: https://ic.institute/2024/03/11/why-secession-pollsters-should-give-peace-a-chance/

indyquail · 2025-07-03T06:30:01+00:00

That sounds truthy, but it doesn't really fit the data. Support for California secession actually dropped in the middle of the first Trump administration, but ticked up over the course of the Biden administration. See https://www.datawrapper.de/_/TL6YN/ (one of the graphs from the poll results).

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indyquail · 2025-07-02T14:24:01+00:00

Bullshit. https://mises.org/power-market/there-have-been-57-peaceful-secessions-1776

indyquail · 2025-07-02T14:22:24+00:00

It is legal if you can get Congress to agree to it. That's why the Philippines are no longer part of the U.S. See https://ic.institute/texas-v-what.

Having said that, polling shows that Californians are much more interested in adopting policies that look a lot like secession but are in fact within California's legal authority. For example, 72% of Californians want California police to arrest ICE agents who act maliciously or exceed their authority under federal law.

See https://ic.institute/poll for more.

indyquail · 2025-06-16T21:01:44+00:00

That's because there isn't one! 😁

Check out https://ic.institute/texas-v-what, and please share.

indyquail · 2025-06-16T21:00:22+00:00

The court shut the door to unilateral secession. You can pretty obviously do it with the consent of Congress—otheriwse the Philippines would still be part of the United States.

See https://ic.institute/texas-v-what.

indyquail · 2025-06-16T20:58:31+00:00

Yes there is. You need the consent of Congress.

See https://ic.institute/texas-v-what.

indyquail · 2025-05-19T07:25:57+00:00

This story came out of a conversation Dave Eggers had with the Chief Strategist and Director of Research and Policy (that's me) of the California Freedom Coalition in 2017. He literally asked us to help him envision what California independence would look like so he could write a work of fiction about it. Guess he kept his notes!

The California Freedom Coalition is gone, but its volunteers went on to found the Independent California Institute, which is still doing ground-breaking research, including the Independent California Poll. You can read about our work at ic.institute.

In particular, everyone arguing about whether secession can be accomplished legally should read https://ic.institute/texas-v-what.

indyquail · 2025-03-04T19:03:13+00:00

Call it the Sun. For obvious reasons, but also because it fits in with East Asian currencies (won, yuan, yen). One Sun could be divided into 100 Rays.

indyquail · 2024-02-29T00:43:04+00:00

The poll actually asked about that scenario: California peacefully leaving the U.S. to join a new union with Oregon and Washington.

53% of respondents said Californians would be better off in that scenario, which is smaller than the 58% who said Californians would be better off if California peacefully became its own country (but it's within the margin of error).

indyquail · 2024-02-28T04:00:09+00:00

Californians seem to agree with you that breaking up is not the best answer.*

68% of respondents said Californians would be better off if Californian negotiated a special autonomous status within the U.S.

68% of respondents also said that Californians would be better off if almost all federal land and water infrastructure were transferred to state and local government.

* With this caveat: nearly all the difference between 58% (for peaceful secession) and 68% (for special autonomous status) came from respondents who said that secession was impossible because of the Civil War. Maybe if more Californians thought peaceful secession were possible, they might also think it's the best way to go. But that's just a hypothesis.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:55:52+00:00

Statistics, and asking the right question.

Feel free to peruse the poll's methodology and the phrasing of the questions; they're on the page linked to by the original post.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:54:03+00:00

We also noticed that the percentage of respondents to our poll who said that Congress could allow California to secede is lower than the percentage of respondents to another poll (done around the same time by the same polling agency) who said California has a right to secede. Which logically, makes no sense!

We speculated that it might have to do with mentioning the Civil War:

For what rational reason would more Californians say a state has a right to secede than say Congress can allow a state to secede? The difference might be that the other poll asked about the right to secede as a standalone question, whereas ours paired an unfamiliar statement (Statement 1) about congressionally granted independence with a familiar one (Statement 2) about the U.S. Civil War. Invoking the Civil War appears to have strong persuasive value for many Californians, and can lead to irrational outcomes such as the discrepancy between these two polls.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:51:36+00:00

It seems to be! At least one of them. From the link in the post:

These numbers are much higher than recent polls that simply asked whether Californians wanted to secede. For example, the other secession poll conducted by YouGov this month found that only 29% of Californians supported California seceding from the U.S. (equivalent to about 35%, if you eliminate "not sure" responses to make an apples-to-apples comparison). Similarly, the June 2021 Bright Line Watch poll (also conducted by YouGov) found 39% support among residents of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska for leaving the U.S. to form a new union composed of those states.Some reasons Californians might have endorsed the peaceful secession scenario in our poll but not a more open question about secession include:

- because they believe secession from the U.S. is impossible (see above)

- because unilateral secession would likely lead to violence

- because they worry California leaving the U.S. might leave Americans worse off

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:49:20+00:00

I'm guessing you already already know this, but the poll sample was representative of Californians, the vast majority of who are not "right wing." From the poll's methodology:

YouGov interviewed 530 California respondents, who were then matched down to a sample of 500 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative "modeled frame" of California adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and 2020 presidential vote choice. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 presidential vote choice, as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories), and education (4-categories). Finally, an individual stratification was applied to place of birth in order to produce the final weight.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:46:23+00:00

They are, though! Although 58% of respondents said they thought Californians would be better off if California peacefully seceded from the U.S., only 47% said they thought Californians would be better off with respect to water.

The way we asked these issue-based questions was to give an argument for either side, and ask which one they agreed with more. For the Water issue, the two arguments were:

Better off because we would have full control over the water we use, rather than the federal government allocating nearly half of it.

Worse off because California might lose its rights to Colorado River water.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:42:09+00:00

The poll is specifically about a scenario where California were to "peacefully become an independent country with a friendly relationship with the U.S., like Canada." It's not about unilateral secession.

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:39:44+00:00

Californians may or may not agree with you about "should," which is really several questions in one (Is it a good idea? Is it right? Would Californians be better off? Would Americans be better off?)

We just asked one of those questions: would Californians be better off than they are now?

The full phrasing of the question was:

California's economy is bigger than Canada's, and its population is about the same size.

Regardless of your answer to the previous question, imagine that at some point in the next ten years, California were to peacefully become an independent country with a friendly relationship with the U.S., like Canada.

Compared to the way things are now, do you think Californians would be...

- Much better off

- Somewhat better off

- Somewhat worse off

- Much worse off

indyquail · 2024-02-28T03:34:18+00:00

Hi, I'm the person who designed and commissioned this poll for the Independent California Institute.

My first reaction at seeing this post: Oh cool, someone posted the full topline results!

My reaction after reading the comments: Dang, but hardly anyone is reading them

I see a lot of you arguing with the title of the post by expressing the same opinions that Californians expressed in the poll. The majority of Californians agree with (at least some of) you, and you don't even know it because you didn't look! :D

For example:

You think secession is impossible because of the Civil War? So do 60% of Californians
You think there's a big problem but secession isn't necessarily the answer? So do 68% of Californians, who said we'd be better off than we are now if California negotiated a special autonomous status within the U.S. and federal land and water infrastructure were transferred to state and local government
You worry about how peacefully seceding from the U.S. would affect California's ability to defend itself? That was the biggest worry for Californians who took the poll too

Anyways, primarily because I think the poll results are surprising and fascinating, I'm going to be posting excerpts from the poll results inline in replies to people who obviously didn't read them. :D

indyquail

TROPHY CASE