Politics

JOHN HOOD: Why are we the second-most popular state?

By JOHN HOOD, Published: September 24, 2025

What is the most popular state in the continental United States? You guessed it: our own North Carolina.

That’s the headline from a recent YouGov survey of more than 2,000 American adults. Asked whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, 68 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of Hawaii. The second-highest favorability rating was North Carolina’s 62 percent, followed by Alaska (61 percent), Tennessee (60 percent) and Colorado (59 percent).

Of course, to say North Carolina is a highly regarded state is not to say it is equally popular across subgroups of respondents. As you might expect to see within today’s political context, assessments differ sharply by partisan affiliation.

The share of Democrats with a favorable view of California (86 percent) was far higher than the share of Republicans who view it favorably (23 percent). On the flipside, Florida was viewed favorably by 83 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of Democrats. One reason the Tar Heel State fared so well in the rankings is that the partisan spread isn’t so huge, with 73 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats expressing a favorable view.

Could this be in part because of divided government? For most of the past 15 years, Democrats have held our governorship and Republicans have controlled our state legislature. Perhaps that gives voters in both partisan coalitions a sense of empowerment. As it happens, other states with divided government also exhibited relatively modest gaps in partisan favorably, including Arizona (64 percent among Republicans, 57 percent among Democrats), Pennsylvania (52 percent and 66 percent respectively), Wisconsin (53 percent and 57 percent), and Virginia (61 percent and 62 percent).

This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, however. Kentucky and Michigan also feature divided government but much-larger partisan gaps in favorability.

Other drivers of North Carolina’s national popularity are surely our strong job growth and (relatively) modest cost of living. I don’t necessarily mean that poll respondents are intimately familiar with economic statistics. But plenty of Americans know personally or have heard about people moving to North Carolina to better their economic prospects. They sense, correctly, that our state is on the upswing. Last year, only Texas experienced more net domestic migration (+85,267) than did North Carolina (+82,288).

Yet another factor is aesthetics. Hawaii and Alaska aren’t economic powerhouses, actually, yet earn high favorability for their natural beauty and recreational opportunities. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Colorado have the good fortune to be attractive to both visitors and job seekers.

While our beaches, mountains, and resort communities make a great impression, our “charm advantage” is broader than that. In a related survey, YouGov asked a favorability question about America’s 50 largest cities. When respondents were limited to assessing only the cities they’d personally visited, the one with the highest net favorability was Raleigh, at +73 percent. Colorado Springs (+69 percent), San Antonio (+69 percent), Virginia Beach (+66 percent), Charlotte (+65 percent), and Nashville (+65 percent) formed the rest of the top tier.

The cities with the worst net-favorability ratings among those who’ve visited them included Baltimore (+6 percent), Fresno (+2 percent), Oakland (-4 percent), Detroit (-5 percent), and Bakersfield (-10 percent).

I sometimes hear my fellow North Carolina natives grumble about culture clashes, congestion and other growth-related challenges. I remind them of two facts. First, while we continue to import lots of people every year, the share of domestic newcomers to longtime residents hasn’t changed as much as you’d think. This is a nationwide phenomenon. Contrary to popular impression, today’s Americans are less likely to relocate across state lines than previous generations were.

Second, I point out that for every challenge associated with (relatively) high population growth, there are multiple challenges associated with low growth. Stagnation is nothing to celebrate. And the ultimate resource isn’t oil, or manufacturing capacity, or lovely fall foliage. It’s people.

North Carolina’s in-migration rate is higher than the national median. So is our fertility rate. We should aspire to do even better, to make our state the most-popular place to live, work, get married and have children. The more the merrier!

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).