Have you ever thought about where the majority of a state’s population lives within the state? Well, maybe this isn’t a very commonly asked question, but it is one that came to my mind the other day.
I was thinking about each state’s major cities when I suddenly realized that many states have their most populous city located either near the state’s northern border or its southern border. For example, consider the cities of Las Vegas, Cheyenne, and New York City, which are all not far from their state’s southern boundary, and the cities of Portland, Chicago, and Jacksonville, which are all decently close to their state’s northern boundary.
The theory that I formed after viewing the map of the United States in my head was that nearly every state had a greater population in their southern half. I mean, my mental map that is solely based on my memory cannot be inaccurate at all, right?
When I viewed a potentially more accurate map, aka an online map, it became obvious that my theory wasn’t exactly correct. I then decided to count the population in the northern and southern halves of each state to get an idea of where the majority of each state’s population lives. To accomplish this, I first had to cut each state in half horizontally; don’t worry, I mean this figuratively.
To find the parallel that bisects each state, I simply combined the latitudes of the northernmost and southernmost points of the state and then divided the sum by the number of points combined, which is two. By using this method, I can find the parallel that is equidistant from the northern and southern extreme points, but because there are zero states that are a perfect rectangle, not even Colorado or Wyoming, it is almost guaranteed that one of the halves will have more land than the other.
I also roughly outlined the perimeter of each half of each state on a website which output the approximate population of the area, therefore my statistics are merely an approximation and not an official census. With this in mind, let’s look at a list of the states ranked by how much of their population lives in either half.
States by Northern and Southern Population
- Utah: 89% north
- Illinois: 88% north
- Hawaii: 86% north
- Rhode Island: 85% north
- Maryland: 85% north
- Massachusetts: 84% north
- Colorado: 78% north
- North Carolina: 76% north
- Georgia: 75% north
- Oklahoma: 74% north
- Oregon: 74% north
- New Mexico: 72% north
- New Jersey: 72% north
- South Carolina: 71% north
- Missouri: 69% north
- Vermont: 69% north
- Arkansas: 69% north
- Delaware: 67% north
- Alabama: 64% north
- Indiana: 64% north
- Washington: 61% north
- Kansas: 57% north
- Tennessee: 57% north
- Florida: 56% north
- Kentucky: 54% north
- Ohio: 53% north
- West Virginia: 52% south
- Montana: 52% south
- Connecticut: 52% south
- Virginia: 56% south
- Texas: 57% south
- Mississippi: 58% south
- North Dakota: 62% south
- Iowa: 63% south
- Wyoming: 64% south
- California: 69% south
- Alaska: 74% south
- Louisiana: 75% south
- Nevada: 76% south
- New York: 78% south
- South Dakota: 80% south
- Idaho: 81% south
- Wisconsin: 83% south
- Pennsylvania: 84% south
- Nebraska: 87% south
- Minnesota: 88% south
- Arizona: 91% south
- Maine: 93% south
- New Hampshire: 95% south
- Michigan: 95% south
The average percentage of the north states is 71% and the average percentage of the south states is 74%, which is surprisingly similar.
The states are almost perfectly split; there are 26 states with a larger population in their northern halves and 24 with a larger population in their southern halves. This means that my mental map was only remarkably inaccurate, which is not too bad at all; it’s perfect for rocket science!
While there are some states that share the same percentage in this list, I assure you that I organized the states in the correct order according to my calculated populations; there are slight differences in the percentages that are not evident because I rounded to the nearest percent for simplicity’s sake. With that out of the way, I can say with confidence that Utah appears to be the state with the greatest population in its northern half and Michigan appears to be the state with the greatest population in its southern half. It also seems that West Virginia has the most even distribution between its two halves.
Interestingly, it looks like there are relatively no isolated states on my map. The states appear to form clusters of more northern and more southern states. I also noticed that about half of the states with a greater northern population are northern states and about half are southern states, and that about 2/3 of the states with a greater southern population are northern states.
One last pattern that I noticed is that, for each pair of states with directions in at least one of their names, both states have the same direction and a fairly similar percentage. The pairs to which I am referring are North Carolina and South Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota, and West Virginia and Virginia.
Do you notice any interesting patterns in these statistics?
Onward American 