Sudanese Public Opinion after Secession

The referendum on the secession of South Sudan was conducted with the exclusion of the Sudanese in the North and as such the people of the South thus expressed their opinion and decided on secession, while the opinions of those of the North were rendered absent. To fill this knowledge gap about public opinion in the North after the referendum, this paper offers an analysis of the data from a field study on Sudanese public opinion that was conducted between February 8 - and February 26, 2011 in all the states of Sudan, and in which 1,200 face-to-face interviews were carried out to explore the reality and the trends of public opinion in the post-secession period. This paper attempts to identify the reasons behind support for, or opposition to, secession and its implications for the future of both North and South Sudan.