Bob CollinsIt’s going to be tough for the mayor of Minneapolis to succeed in her plan to have more people bragging about her city. People here don’t know how good they’ve got it.
That much seems clear by virtue of a new Gallup poll that shows only 61% of the people surveyed here think Minnesota is “one of the best possible states to live.”
Keep in mind that there are almost no surveys on any topic anymore in which Minnesota isn’t near the top. It’s among the most educated, lowest unemployed, healthiest, best read, and best quality of life states in the country. The science of polling says so.
But the survey seems to suggest we don’t love us all that much.
Only 13 percent of those surveyed said Minnesota was the best possible state to live in in the U.S. The braggarts in Texas lead the country in highest percentage of people who said their state is the best state to live in.
We could blame it on the tough winter, but the survey was conducted last year between June and the end of December, before we became the living winter hell we were.
It could be worse. We could be Illinois. It’s the state with the highest percentage of people who don’t particularly care for where they live.
Says Gallup…
Residents with the most pride in their state as a place to live generally boast a greater standard of living, higher trust in state government, and less resentment toward the amount they pay in state taxes. However, the factors that residents use to determine whether their state is a great place to live are not always obvious. West Virginia, for example, falls far behind all other states on a variety of metrics, including economic confidence, well-being, standard of living, and stress levels. Still, over a third of West Virginians feel their state is among the best places to live, giving it a ranking near the middle of the pack.
Two percent of those surveyed said Minnesota is the worst possible state to live in, proving that at least 2 percent of people living in Minnesota have never lived anywhere else.
