I may be biased, and there’s a heck of a lot of this state I haven’t seen, but for Montana, I’m going to pick my current city of Bozeman. Like most places in Montana (except Butte), you have clean air, natural beauty, and good people. But being a college town, you also get a lot of culture. And there’s enough tourism to provide a steady influx into the economy, but unlike, say, West Yellowstone or Gardner, we don’t need it.
Charleston for South Carolina
I don’t even know where to begin for my beloved home state (NC)…so many places to pick from. Oh hell, I’ll just say Chapel Hill. 
Sure. I just couldn’t come up with anything better.
NY: NYC. The rest is just depressed wasteland.
KS: Salina
RI: Newport (seconded)
Now there’s a nomination I thought I’d never see. They do have a decent strip club, but what else does Salina have that makes it better than KCK?
Personal experience and childhood memories, mostly. I never really liked KC or Olathe. Salina has a neighborly hominess that I love. Or loved. I admit, last time I was there, it seemed like a tire dump and trailor park with a city around it. But Santa Fe Ave, Cozy Burgers, Tony’s Pizza, that old gilded movie theatre where I saw Star Wars… Fond memories.
Dayton? ***Dayton??!!??***You’re going to have to back that up. Good luck. How does it beat Cincinnati, or (for the less urban-minded) Athens?
Northeast Ohio, where I grew up, is pretty nice. Most of the towns of any size are meh, so I can’t nominate a place, but the country is quite pretty.
I spent two years at U-M. I can’t argue that Asquare is a nice town. Lots of money. If you want to not see poor people, Ann Arbor’s the place to be. But they’re sooooo full of themselves. I miss Zingerman’s though.
I liked Park Ridge (a near Chicago suburb) a lot. I don’t know any other places in Illinois, really, so I can’t say anything more about the state.
You were kidding with Cincinnati, right? Well, anyway, not my kind of town. And hell, it can barely be considered Ohio.
Dayton was nice when I was there. Nice restaurants, bars, had a decent art and music scene, seemed quite clean, great downtown, rehabbed lofts and condos, the Dayton Dragons. I loved it there. It’s the only city in Ohio that I’d willingly go back to.
Um, I’m gonna have to disagree a little there with Manchester. And, um, do you have those TPS reports?
For New Hampshire, I nominate Hanover. It has Dartmouth, a nice downtown, and is just plain classy.
For Ohio, what about Lebanon?
For Kentucky, I suggest Danville.
Iowa: Iowa City or Cedar Falls. NOT Waterloo.
Illinois: Definitely Chicago
SC: Charleston
Georgia: Savannah by a mile.
Arizona: Bisby. A little town in the mountains and very cool.
California: San Francisco or Monterrey
Missouri: Kansas City
What, no other votes for anywhere in Hawaii???
I went to Dartmouth for grad school. Hanover is one of the prettiest towns in the country and the joke was that there were no fat, sick, or otherwise undesirable things there. If you like utopia, Hanover is a pretty good vote.
Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but how can we even hope to accomplish determining the best place to live?
Some people love dense city areas, some people love a drivable city. Some people love the arts, some people love the sports. Some people want to raise a family, some people want to party all night. (Not that any of these are mutually exclusive).
But, just for the record… Seattle 
Why not Waterloo? I always liked Waterloo better than Cedar Falls. I’m just curious.
Consider me schooled. Although I kind of liked Manchester the one time I was there, I just don’t know the state very well.
Well, if you look at the “Worst Places” thread, you’ll see I disagreed at least as much with Manchester’s (short-lived) placement there.
Manchester is… okay. Just not the kind of place that should be in either thread.
That’s Sedro Wooley. My grandmother was born there.
My choice for Washington would be Issaquah. Half way between the mountains and the sound, still has some small town charm while growing at an extremely fast pace. You can find anything you want, from big city sports and culture to being in the middle of a forest all by yourself, all within a 30 minute drive.
The whole country sucks get over it. ONLY KIDDING. I nominate for Illinois,
Galena.
For New Hampshire I’ll nominate Henniker, 'cause I grew up there.
Seriously, it’s a pretty little college town in the center of the state accessible to everything.
I’d go along with Hanover, though. My only argument would be that it is sort of isolated.
For Alaska
I am going with Homer.
Homer is a true gem of a town.
It probably won’t win, because most of you have never been there, but I put up Asheville, NC as the best place in not only North Carolina, but in all the US of A.