The phrase "if you don't like it, then you can leave" might be a dangerous thing to say in Illinois.
According to a recent Gallup poll, the state would lose a quarter of its population if every resident who didn't like it decided to leave it. The poll asked survey-takers to rate their state as a place to live, and Illinois had the highest percentage of people who said it is the worst place to live, at 25 percent.
Illinois was followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island, 17 percent of whose residents rated their states as the worst place to live.
The states with the highest rates in the "best possible state to live in" category were Texas (28 percent), Alaska (27 percent), Hawaii (25 percent) and Montana (24 percent). Only 3 percent of Illinoisans put their state in the same category.
The data from this poll correlates with data from other Gallup studies about trust in state government and resentment toward paying state taxes.
In a Gallup poll earlier this month, Illinois had the highest percentage by far of residents who rated the amount of trust in their state government as "none at all," at 35 percent. The closest followers were Rhode Island and Maryland at 20 percent.
Illinois also came in at No. 4 for griping about state taxes, according to another Gallup poll earlier this month.
States with the highest opinion ratings are more likely to have better standards of living, in addition to more trust in their state government and less resentment toward paying state taxes.
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States in the Midwest and the West generally had higher opinions of their states, with Illinois being an obvious exception.
