Tim -

You might have done better focusing on those who actually supported succession, which the study also covered.

I can't resist a comment on the "pre-civil war" free-state/slave-state map. I've done a lot of genealogical work, and found slave-owners amongst my ancestors. Guess what? They weren't all from the South. Depending on how "pre" your pre-civil war data is, even Massachusetts is a red state....

The map also conveniently ignores the fact that the blue/red pattern in recent voting is more a city/non-city divide than state vs. state. Such a secession would be peculiar indeed.

The survey also shows me again why I don't trust surveys. The results for "the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections" show an impressive 44% "agree" response, but that actually includes those who said they "somewhat agree." Even I, being completely honest, might have responded with "somewhat agree." Our system does have significant flaws that can't be fixed by politics -- what system doesn't? But "fixes" by any other means generally prove to be far, far worse.

Sorry for taking a while to respond to this, as there are some really thoughtful comments here.

You might have done better focusing on those who actually supported succession, which the study also covered.

I'm not sure I understand this critique. What did I miss?

There's a good argument to be made that states do have the right to peaceably secede... You posted on this, in fact.

Just to clarify, I *did* cover the issues around Sumpter, but I admit to being somewhat agnostic on the legal question regarding succession, and my own views of it's goodness. As usual (on such issues) I look more for "Are your positions consistent" than "do I think you're right?" (Since I myself am not sure.)

I agree there is indeed a legal case which could be made. And I thought about that a bit. But I believe that for most people surveyed, this is probably more a question of their personal views of what would be best, rather than asking them to render an abstract legal opinion of what is allowed.

I'm curious whether the same people who call for 'unity' are the same ones calling for secesion. It's not enough to show that they're both on the left.

I thought 37% to 17% liberal/conservative split would indicate so. Also if you use the ethnic groups mentioned above as a proxy for party affiliation.

Linda: I can't resist a comment on the "pre-civil war" free-state/slave-state map.

Great observation! Despite being a thorough Northerner, I always get annoyed when the media implies that the Southern states are still the most racist because of history. This is wrong for several reasons:

(1) The north used to be obscenely racist too: in fact, many opposed slavery primarily because it imported blacks into the US and encouraged them to flourish in number!

(2) Regions change. Germany and Prussia were certainly among the most warlike regions before WWII. It doesn't follow, then, that the Germans must be so today. To the contrary, they've gone to the opposite extreme and become pacifists.

Likewise, I suspect many people in the South have gone out of their way to undo the ugly legacy of those who lived there before them.

The map also conveniently ignores the fact that the blue/red pattern in recent voting...

The map was merely a humorous joke, not a serious proposal!

The survey also shows me again why I don't trust surveys.

Are you kidding me? How can you say that? According to a recent survey by the The New York Times, nearly a full 97% of respondents found surveys to be "wholly reliable and trustworthy"! ;-)

I'm saying

1."If x is democratically supported, should it be legal?"

is not the same as

2."Should x be democratically supported?"

The original Zogby study covered both #1 and #2, but you left out #2.

Asked whether they would support a secessionist movement in their own state (emphasis added), 18% said they would, with those in the South most likely to say they would back such an effort. In the South, 24% said they would support such an effort, while 15% in the West and Midwest said the same. Here, too, younger adults were more likely than older adults to be supportive - 35% of those under age 30 would support secession in their state, compared to just 17% of those over age 65. Among African Americans, 33% said they would support secession, compared to just 15% of white adults. The more education a respondent had, the less likely they were to support secession - as 38% of those with less than a high school diploma would support it, compared to just 10% of those with a college degree.

I'm not trying to argue against your conclusions.

(Though I certainly wouldn't mind if you did!)

I admit that post was sort of a drive-by posting: sometimes, when something "smells fishy", I go digging into the original sources. But Zogby is a generally reputable as far as I know; I've not caught them playing games in the past. So I didn't look it up and try to figure out if they sorted out the "oughts" from the "cans".

surprisingly, to me anyways, there wasn't a huge gap between those who thought democratic secession was legal and those who would support it.

We're weird, Ryan. As I said above, most people simply tend believe (a) if they support something, it should be legal, and (b) if something is legal, that must mean it's morally okay (and vise-versa). So I didn't expect there would be much of a difference between "that should be legal" and "that's a good thing to do". There apparently wasn't.

A political party isn't a single individual. I can buy the assertion that portions of the political base advocate unity and different portions advocate secession...

A valid point, though I'm not sure how meaningful. If 30% of party X support A, and 20% of them also support B, then, given the low percentages, you might (hypothetically) be looking at a big overlap, no overlap, or something in between.

Buf if you swap out the numbers to something more like %37 and 70% (or even 70% and 70%) then there's obviously more of a case for correlation: there must be significant overlap in such cases.

So what percentage of the Democratic party responds to "unity" statements? I'd guess (shooting from the hip) well over half, at a minimum. That puts us at 55% ("Unity!") and 37% ("Seceed!"), at a minimum. On that alone it appears really unlikely that they're two discrete groups.

Next, look at the numbers we've cited above. Young people favor secession far more than older ones. Blacks favor it more than whites. Liberals (as a whole) favor it more than conservatives.

Now look at each of those spectra: Blacks vote to the left far more than whites. Liberals vote to the left far more than conservatives. The young tend to be far more to the left than the old.

So on each spectrum, when you look in a "leftward" direction, support for secession increases.

To finish the argument in your favor (I'm temporarily assigning the position to you, though I know we could both easily switch sides just for the fun of it) you'd have to argue that support for "unity" DID NOT move in the same way: That "unity" occurred more toward the right or center, such that support for it decreased as you moved from the right edge of the Democratic party (the middle overall) towards the left edge.

No: I think "unity" is very much a "left" belief, so I think it's going to increase in all the same groups where "secession-support" increases.

Hence, my assertion that the two beliefs go together.

Finally, I'm also working from what I've seen in the past: those who spoke about "unity" is the past have always been those who want to control things, and run them their way. ("Unity" simply meaning, in practice: "Everyone needs to adopt my positions." (Nobody ever argues for unity around their opponents' positions!)) And secession is likewise a political tool for seeing your will done -- often* marked by an unwillingness to tolerate co-existence with competing beliefs.

So, again, this would predict that those who support secession would also favor "unity" arguments.

(* An exception occurs when minorities are constrained from liberty. Such as the US not wanting British rule, the Ukraine not wanting to be under the KGB's thumb, the Puritans** not wanting to face jail for their beliefs, etc.)

(** Though, oddly, I consider the Puritians to be a somewhat "leftist" group, given their desire to create a utopia here on earth and their desire to live under socialism. I say "somewhat" because these things are not leftist as long as they're done voluntarily, which they did, at least initially. Later, they gave up on the communist farming, and stopped needing Indian assistance in order not to starve. The first Thanksgiving feast was necessary because they were using a collectivist model for agriculture.)

R:I'm curious whether the same people who call for 'unity' are the same ones calling for secesion. It's not enough to show that they're both on the left.

T:I thought 37% to 17% liberal/conservative split would indicate so. Also if you use the ethnic groups mentioned above as a proxy for party affiliation.

Consider the implications of;

The more education a respondent had, the less likely they were to support secession - as 38% of those with less than a high school diploma would support it, compared to just 10% of those with a college degree.

This is supporting an actual movement, not just the right to seceed. Roughly 20% of those who supported the right weren't sure about supporting an actual movement.

So a college degree was an excellent predictor of opposition to secession.

This means it's possible that the media, intelligentsia and Democratic talking heads could, conceivably, be mostly anti-secession while significant portions of the less privileged base were still in favor. (I'm not sure about Hollywood, here) The fact that secession was so strongly favored by the young also supports this notion. Given how fragmented the Democratic base is, it doesn't seem totally off-kilter to suggest that they have a strong need for Democratic polititians to unite people with widely varying interests together (against a common foe) in order to win.

Nobody ever argues for unity around their opponents' positions

Of course, by definition. Because once you do that, they're no longer your opponent. Or vice versa.