The Transformation Continues: New Study Shows Conservatives are Nearly Three Times as Likely to Consider Leaving California

According to a new survey by the University of California, Berkeley, it stinks to be a conservative in the Golden State.

Well, that’s not exactly how they put it.

Per the study, more than half of CA’s registered voters (52%) have tossed around the idea of leaving the state. And among those seriously considering it, conservatives comprise three times the number of liberals.

In that most intensely ponderous group, only 14% identified as Democrats, compared to 40% who reported themselves as Republicans.

Aside from political/ideological affiliation, only “modest differences” were found among those wanting to get out of Dodge.

As for popular reasons, high-as-the-moon housing rates hit the bell at #1 — 71% named them as a factor.

Still, high taxes didn’t do too shabbily, either: That motivation scored a 58% among would-be migrants.

The state’s political culture also snagged some high marks: 46% listed it as a reason to skeedaddle, bolstered, of course, by a higher number of GOP dreamers.

And here’s something interesting from the findings:

Another question in the poll updated a 50-year time series asking Californians how they would describe the state as a place to live. The results of the latest poll are somewhat more upbeat than recent past measures. Half the of state’s registered voters (50%) now describe California as “one of the best places” to live, up from 43% who felt this way in 2013, the last time this question was posed. However, here too, partisanship and political ideology play a prominent role, with Democrats and liberals nearly three times as likely as Republicans and conservatives to describe California as one of the best places to live.

Could that be the ol’ birds-of-a-feather principle at work?

Might be, since more Red Robins wanna fly the coop.

It seems to me there are two ways to go for right-wingers in the Land of the Left: You can bolt for a friendlier frontier (but likely less friendly weather), or you can stay and tooth-and-nail it for the state which once elected — good Lord, can you even believe it? — Ronald Reagan as governor.

From the looks of the study, a bunch of folks are leaning toward “So long, suckers.”

Personally, I hope enough people in favor of smaller government will remain in order to fix the state. Its problems, it seems, are directly related to that difference in perspective — how bloated should the institution of governance be?

In California, ironically — in a sphere of the physically fit — we’ve got a state capital that’s morbidly obese.

And for many with a suitcase beckoning, apparently, fat ain’t where it’s at.

For all its foibles — LA’s strike against the NRA (here) and San Francisco’s poop map (here) among the mess — I hope the courageous of California remain and fight for the state which once shone as a beacon of American success. May they hold to that great quote from an unlikely movie-actor-turned-conservative-president: