Poll: 56% of San Francisco Bay Area Residents Plan to Leave in ‘Next Few Years’

A new poll suggests that the majority of San Francisco Bay Area residents are unhappy with life in the liberal bastion and want to leave soon, with 56% of respondents saying that they plan to leave in “the next few years.”

According to SFGate, the poll, conducted among 1,610 registered voters across five Bay Area counties by Joint Venture Silicon Valley for the Bay Area News Group, found:

A shocking 71% of respondents said the quality of life in the greater Bay Area is worse now compared to five years ago. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they are considering leaving in the next five years — including 53% of respondents who work in the tech sector.

…

Russell Hancock, President and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley .. said the 53% figure is the highest percentage of people who have said they want to leave the Bay Area compared to previous polls conducted outside of Joint Venture.

Indeed, an overwhelming majority of respondents said it’s high housing costs (77%) and cost of living (84%) spurring their desire to seek out greener pastures. Homelessness, wildfires and drought were also issues respondents considered when mulling the decision to leave the Bay Area.

The strong desire to leave came despite the fact that two-thirds of respondents said that they felt a strong sense of connection to the Bay Area. More optimistically, only 52% of the respondents felt that the region was headed in the wrong direction, only slightly less than the 48% who felt is was headed in the right direction.

The margin of error in the poll was 2.8%.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his company would be the latest to move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas, though the company would retain major operations in the once-Golden State.

And Walgreens closed five more retail stores in the area, a decision driven by a spate of shoplifting after California voters passed Proposition 47 in 2014, which made the theft of items worth less than $950 a misdemeanor.

The Bay Area is home to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who represents San Francisco itself, as well as a number of other far-left leaders, who continue to be re-elected despite voters’ frustration.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the former mayor of San Francisco, enjoyed his strongest support in the Bay Area in last month’s recall election, winning roughly 80% of the vote.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.