There hasn’t been much activity on the Post’s local politics blog, D.C. Wire, this week, but today we’re getting some bad news for the hopes of many a voting rights activist.

In a post titled “D.C. Statehood: Popular as Dirt,” Metro reporter Lori Montgomery writes that a recent Post poll of 1,011 adults nationwide found that 58 percent opposed statehood for the District, 22 percent supported it, and 20 percent were undecided. More than that, the poll found that young Democrats living in the Northeast or along the West coast are more likely to support statehood than older Republicans living in the Midwest.

We asked Kevin Kiger, communications director for D.C. Vote, for a response. He wasn’t as pessimistic as we would have thought, citing another poll indicating that the more people know about the denial of voting rights for District residents, the more likely they are to support them:

The results are not surprising given what past polls have shown about the general public’s support for statehood. If – as we know from polling – most Americans don’t understand D.C.’s denial of congressional representation, it stands to reason that statehood would be more misunderstood.

Kiger noted that a January 2005 nationwide poll found that 82 percent of Americans support full voting representation for the District, while 71 percent support full budgetary autonomy for the city. But more importantly, roughly 80 percent of Americans expressed some level of ignorance towards the District’s second-class status, and were more likely to support voting rights when made aware of it.

Of course, statehood is a bigger issue, so Americans may be slower to come around to the idea. But as Kiger notes, the key is education — the more people know about the District’s historic injustice, the more likely it is that they will support changing it.