Tennesseans in poll overwhelmingly reject state seceding from U.S.

Arkansas-Tennessee Live Blog

NASHVILLE - Tennessee voters overwhelmingly said "no" to seceding from the United States, according to a Vanderbilt University poll.

Nine of ten registered voters - 90 percent - turned their thumbs down to the idea when asked if Tennessee should form an independent country. They said the state should remain a part of the U.S.

Seven percent said Tennessee should be independent. One percent indicated they hadn't given the idea much thought while two percent said they didn't know. One percent refused to say.

Vanderbilt conducted the poll of 829 registered voters in response to petitions filed for many states, including Tennessee, on a White House website and seeking to secede "peacefully" from the union. Vanderbilt's poll of 829 voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percent.

As of today, 31,478 people had signed a petition posted on the White House website asking President Barack Obama to "peacefully grant" Tennessee the right to withdraw from the union and form its own government. It needed 25,000 to generate some type of response from the White House.

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