They say it's fringe. Somebody went and asked.
What New Hampshire was actually asked, what it actually said, who paid for the poll, and how that stacks against the independence movements that won their vote.
Twenty-nine percent. Fifty-two among Republicans.
SurveyUSA put a battery of independence questions to 625 New Hampshire adults over eight days in June 2022. These are New Hampshire questions, asked of New Hampshire people. Nothing here is borrowed from another state or adjusted.
"I would prefer New Hampshire to govern itself as an independent country." All adults
The same question, among New Hampshire Republicans
"Would you support the idea of New Hampshire holding a vote to find out whether voters want New Hampshire to peacefully separate from the US?"
Roughly a third of a million adults, already there, before anyone campaigned.
Set against the Census count of 1,170,277 New Hampshire adults, 29% is about 339,000 people and 42% is about 492,000. The poll carries a credibility interval of 4.5 points, so treat those as a third of a million and close to half a million rather than exact counts.
The rest of the poll is just as useful. Sixty-three percent of Granite Staters said they trust their state government more than the federal government. Sixty-five percent said politicians in Washington violate their rights more than they protect them. Sixty-four percent said laws made in Washington are incompatible with New Hampshire's culture of freedom.
SurveyUSA Market Research Study #26405. Fielded 21 to 28 June 2022, released 5 July 2022. 625 New Hampshire adults, weighted to Census targets for gender, age, race, education and home ownership. Credibility interval 4.5 points. SurveyUSA report / full crosstabs.
Who paid for it.
The poll was commissioned by the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, which is a separate organization from NHEXIT Now. SurveyUSA prints the sponsor on the face of the report, we are printing it here, and anyone checking would have found it in thirty seconds anyway.
What sponsorship does not do is write the answers. SurveyUSA is an independent firm with a long public record and it publishes the full crosstabs, the question wording, the field dates and the weighting for anyone to pull apart. The link above goes to SurveyUSA's own report.
Every question, every crosstab, every field date is published. Go and check.
What SurveyUSA measured is a floor. It asked New Hampshire cold, before any campaign, any advertising, or any public argument had been made for independence at all. Forty-two percent is where this starts.
Ahead of the movements that won.
A poll is one thing and a referendum is another. So set New Hampshire beside the two independence votes everyone remembers, measured at the point those campaigns won the right to hold them.
SurveyUSA, June 2022. About 492,000 adults, with no campaign yet run.
Averaged year by year from 2013 to 2016, Leave never crossed 42%. It won anyway, on turnout the pollsters never reached.
Support sat around a third when Britain granted the vote. Scotland outran its polling on the day.
New Hampshire is not behind the movements that won a vote. It is level with one and ahead of the other, and it got there cold. Independence referendums also draw enormous turnout, around 85% worldwide, and the people the pollsters never reach have a habit of showing up. Forty-two percent going in is a strong opening hand.
Why the question matters more than the answer.
NHEXIT put six questions on the University of New Hampshire Survey Center's Granite State Poll in April 2025. The same 1,455 people were asked about the same subject three different ways, on the same afternoon.
"Should New Hampshire secede from the United States?"
"Should New Hampshire hold a vote on the question?"
"If New Hampshire were not already in the union, would you want it to join?"
Nobody changed their mind between those questions. The sentence changed.
Twenty-two points of spread, inside a single poll, on a single afternoon. Ask people to leave something and they hesitate at the word. Ask whether they would have joined it in the first place and a third of New Hampshire says no.
This is why a poll cannot settle a constitutional question. A poll answers the pollster. Only a ballot, with a neutral question and a real choice, answers the state. That is the whole reason this campaign asks for a vote rather than another survey.
University of New Hampshire Survey Center, Granite State Poll, April 2025. 1,455 respondents, fielded 17 to 21 April 2025, margin of sampling error 2.1 points. Commissioned by NHEXIT. Read the full report.
They will not let New Hampshire vote.
Anyone certain that Granite Staters want to stay holds the simplest possible way to prove it. Put it on the ballot. A referendum that came back no would end this movement in an afternoon and settle the question for a generation, in their favor, permanently.
They are not asking for that vote. They are working to make sure the question is never put at all.
The refusal is not confidence. It is a confession.
A poll is not a vote. The only number that will ever settle this is the one that comes out of a ballot box, when New Hampshire is finally handed the question. That is the entire point, and it is exactly what the other side is working to prevent.
Everything on this page, checkable
- SurveyUSA Market Research Study #26405, New Hampshire, fielded 21 to 28 June 2022, 625 adults. Full crosstabs (PDF). Commissioned by the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence.
- University of New Hampshire Survey Center, Granite State Poll, April 2025, 1,455 respondents. Full report (PDF). Commissioned by NHEXIT.
- US Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025. New Hampshire adult population 1,170,277 as of 1 July 2025.
- Scottish Social Attitudes Survey; UK pre-referendum polling averages, 2013 to 2016.
- Independent cross-check on the adjusted estimate: USexit, How we get these numbers, which arrives at roughly 45% for New Hampshire by a different route.