North Dakota was never polled. The habit of running itself never left.

This is the state that chartered its own bank when outside lenders would not deal fairly with it, and North Dakota still owns that bank today. It does not wait for permission to solve a North Dakota problem. So when the numbers came back with no reading for this state, that was not proof the instinct is missing. It was proof no one has asked out loud, in a place where governing yourself has never been a strange idea.

Here is why the missing number is not the real one. An abstract poll asks a stranger to bless a vague word. A ballot asks something else entirely: a private, peaceful, yes-or-no choice, on a set day, about a set question. When you frame it that way, support runs about thirty points above the abstract poll in the states that were measured. Apply that same lift to North Dakota's plainspoken independent streak, and this state lands at or very near a majority. The blank line was never absence. It was a poll that stopped short.