Are America’s Best States Red or Blue?

What makes a good state?

Ahead of what’s sure to be a hotly contested presidential election in November, partisans are likely to be disappointed with the answer evident in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best States rankings: Political leanings may have less to do with excellence than one might expect.

Broadly speaking, blue states – meaning those who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 – fare better in the 2024 edition of the rankings in such areas as health care and the environment. But a number of red states – those who opted for former President Donald Trump four years ago – account for many of the nation’s top performers in the economy and fiscal stability categories.

Overall, when state performances are assessed across the eight total categories in the Best States rankings, the top 10 breaks down cleanly – and perhaps appropriately for a divided nation.

There are five red states, along with five blue states.

Red vs. Blue in the Overall Rankings

Launched in 2017, the Best States rankings are designed to inform citizens, business leaders and policymakers about what's working and what needs improvement across the country. The project measures the 50 states using 71 metrics in the eight categories of health care, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, fiscal stability and natural environment.

A look at the intersection between states’ excellence – or lack thereof – and their left vs. right leaning indicates what’s working is a political and policy mix, particularly among the top 10 states overall.

The No. 1 state is red Utah, followed by blue New Hampshire. Third is red Nebraska, fourth is blue Minnesota, fifth and sixth are red Idaho and Iowa, seventh and eighth are blue Vermont and Washington state, ninth is red Florida and 10th is blue Massachusetts.

Utah – the top state in the rankings for the second year in a row – scores particularly well on education, ranking second nationally on an assessment that incorporates the state’s relatively stellar eighth-grade reading and math scores, among other metrics. Utah comes in third on economy, particularly excelling in labor force participation and business creation. No. 9 Florida posted a similarly strong showing, ranking first in both economy and education, thanks in large part to higher education metrics like low tuition and fees and economic metrics like gross domestic product growth.

New Hampshire, meanwhile, posted the second-lowest rates of violent and property crime in the country – fueling its No. 1 ranking in crime and corrections – and also ranks in the top 10 for economy, education, opportunity and environment. No. 10 Massachusetts ranks second in health care, third in education, fourth in crime and corrections, seventh in natural environment and eighth in economy.

Location, Location, Location?

Top-performing states – along with the bottom 10 – display some regional patterns.

Red states in the top 20 of the overall rankings, for example, mostly come from the Great Plains and Mountain regions of the U.S., while red states in the bottom 10 are disproportionately located in the South.

The state that ranks 50th overall is Louisiana, with other low-ranking states in the Deep South including Mississippi (48th), Alabama (44th) and South Carolina (41st). Other bottom 10, solidly red states nearby are Arkansas (47th), West Virginia (46th) and Oklahoma (43rd).

Only two states that went for Biden in 2020 land in the bottom 10 overall: Michigan at No. 42 and New Mexico at No. 49.

Notable absences from both the top and bottom 10 include most of the nation’s most populous states, which are clustered around the middle of the rankings. Florida, the nation’s third-most populous state, ranks ninth, but the other five biggest states in population all rank between 23rd (New York) and 40th (Pennsylvania).

The 2024 Swing States

The seven swing states identified by U.S. News as being critical to the outcome of the 2024 election between Biden and Trump stretch roughly across the country and land in both the top and bottom halves of the Best States rankings.

First-Rate for Blue States

Two clear examples of categories where blue states consistently score well are health care and natural environment. Not coincidentally, these are two issues of long-standing importance to Democratic politicians.

On health care, the top 13 states went for Biden in 2020 – including one of this year’s purple swing states, Pennsylvania. The highest-ranking red state on health care is Utah, at 14th. By contrast, the bottom 12 states for health care are all red states.

A state’s performance in health care is determined by factors such as health insurance enrollment; doctor and dentist visits; affordability; rates of mortality, obesity, smoking and suicide; and nursing home quality.

The health care metrics “are tied very closely to policy initiatives, which is why blue states dominate that category,” says Marcia Godwin, a political scientist and professor of public administration at the University of La Verne in California. “There also appears to be some correlation with opportunities for outdoor activities and lower smoking rates.”

The states in the bottom 12 include four – Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Wyoming – that thus far have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which was signed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat. States in the Deep South also have experienced an obesity epidemic, Godwin notes.

“The racial and social disparities of health are most dramatically seen in those states, both historically and in terms of present-day policy,” she says.

The natural environment category – which is based on drinking water quality, air quality, industrial toxins and the risk pollution poses to residents’ long-term health – is also strong for blue states. The top 10 states in the category include Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Two red states make the environmental top 10: Nebraska and South Dakota. But red states also dominate the bottom 10 on the environment, which includes Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas and Utah. Blue Delaware makes the list, along with two states that went to Biden in 2020 and this year are key presidential battlegrounds: Arizona and Nevada.

One area where Republicans often tout their bona fides is one in which blue states do surprisingly well. Eight blue states rank in the top 10 for crime and corrections, a category that includes incarceration rates and racial parity in imprisonment alongside the violent and property crime rates.

Economy, Opportunity and Education

Similar to the overall rankings, a breakdown of the top 10 states in the economy category – encompassing metrics like job growth and labor force participation – churns out an even red vs. blue mix. The red states are Florida, Idaho, Montana, Texas and Utah, with blue Colorado, Massachusetts and New Hampshire – along with Biden 2020 states Arizona and Nevada – rounding out the group.

The bottom five states on the economy, however, are all red: Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia.

The opportunity category – which is based on a range of metrics related to affordability, economic opportunity, and equality across lines of race, gender and disability – offers an unusual mix of states. Blue Vermont and Maine rank first and second in the category, while the top 10 also includes the red states of Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

A series of populous blue states cluster in the bottom 10 states for opportunity, including California, New Jersey and New York. The populous red states of Florida and Texas also rank low in the category.

On education, the red states of Florida and Utah rank first and second, but most of the remaining states in the top 10 are blue, including Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia. The education rankings encompass high school and college graduation rates, debt at college graduation and preschool enrollment, along with other metrics.