A Gallup poll published on April 30 shows that 50 percent of Illinois residents want to leave the state and 47 percent of Marylanders would like to live in another state.
Connecticut came in second place in the poll, at 49 percent. The three states whose residents least want to move to another state are Montana, Hawaii, and Maine, each of which posted a 23-percent number in the poll. There shouldn’t have been much of a question about Hawaii, right? Anyway, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Texas also have only about 24 percent of residents looking for greener pastures.
But although about half the people want to move out of Illinois and Maryland, very few actually will. According to the poll, only about 19 and 17 percent in Illinois and Maryland, respectively, said they are extremely, very, or even somewhat likely to move within the next 12 months.
When it comes to “why” people want to move out of state, work-related issues top the list, with 26 percent of Illinoisans saying their desire to move was due to work-related issues, while only 6 percent attributed their desire to family and friends and an equal 6 percent to school-related issues.
In Maryland the picture was a little different. Only 17 percent of Marylanders who said they wanted to move out of state blamed work-related issues, while about the same number, 17 percent, said the primary reason they wanted to leave the state was because of family and friends. Like Illinois, only 6 percent of Marylanders blamed their wanting to leave the state on the schools.
