Solid majority favours Greenland independence

Support for Greenlandic independence is strongest among the country’s older generations, according to an HS Analyse poll carried out for Sermitsiaq, a Greenlandic newspaper published by this website’s parent company, taken in the weeks after the new coalition government made the issue one of its priorities.


Solid majority for independence

Overall, Greenland’s independence movement has the support of a solid majority of voters, but the share of those expressing certainty about their belief that the country should be an independent state declined with the age of those responding.

The poll, which asked voters how important it was that Greenland became an independent state, found that 64% of respondents answered “very important” or “somewhat important”. Twenty-four percent felt it was unimportant to some degree, while 12% were undecided.


Strongest amongst the oldest

The share of those finding independence important was highest amongst adults, with those aged 60-69 most in favour, at 70%, with only 7% of the age group undecided.

At 65% the share of those supporting fell somewhat for voters in the 70+ age bracket, but here the number of undecideds was lowest, at just 5%.


Yongest most sceptical

A majority in all age brackets felt independence was important, but the share declined with age, as did the number of those who said they were undecided about the issue.

Independence was least important for the 18-29 group, the youngest involved in the survey. Some 56% of voters here reported that independence was important, but fully 29% were undecided, two percentage points higher than the number of those who felt independence was “very important” and the same proportion as those answering it was “important”.


After new Government

When broken down along party lines, more than 70% of voters saying they supported one of the three parties making up the governing coalition said they also felt independence was important to some degree.

The poll comes on the heels of a decision by the coalition government, which took office on October 27, to create a cabinet position for an independence minister, and to begin work on drawing up a constitution that could be used in the event Greenland declares itself independent.


Learning from the Faroes?

As part of her duties as independence minister, Suka K Frederiksen met last week with officials from the Faroe Islands to discuss whether Greenland could learn something from that country’s own on-going independence movement from Denmark.

Perhaps: a poll taken in the Faroe Islands and published on December 2 found that 48% of that country’s voters were opposed to independence, if it also meant losing its annual 640 million kroner ($92 million) subsidy from Denmark.


Did not ask about money

The Greenlandic poll did not include a similar question, but doing so might have made a difference: Nuuk receives 3.5 billion kroner annually from Copenhagen as direct subsidies, amounting to more than 20% of the country’s GDP in 2015. Additionally, Greenland receives  nearly a billion in refunds, for example for policing and the judiciary. 

The cost of freedom, it turns out, was buried in the figures.

This article first appeared in The Arctic Journal, and is published here with permission.