# Half of US population lives in 9 states. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 10, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868 "2019-07-10T22:31:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/41 "2019-07-11T17:30:39Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Georgia also happens to be the largest state east of the Mississippi. > [@Procrustus](#): > > Not according to [this cite.](https://www.netstate.com/states/tables/st_size.htm) > > Wisconsin and Florida are a bit larger. Huh. I was quoting a friend (and Georgia native) who told me this decades ago. I was pretty sure I had looked it up and confirmed it myself sometime since then, but unless Georia has somehow lost (or both Florida and Wisconsin have somehow gained) about 7,000 square miles sometime in the last 20 or 30 years, I guess I hadn’t. And my friend George was mistaken. Thanks for fighting my ignorance. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Attributed to Mark Twain and Josh Billings, but not actually written by either.) ---
**Author:** ![Covfefe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Covfefe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covfefe)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/42 "2019-07-11T17:37:10Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Not according to [this cite.](https://www.netstate.com/states/tables/st_size.htm) > > Wisconsin and Florida are a bit larger. Based on the second column which only shows land area, Georgia is the largest. If you include water, Michigan is the largest byfar. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/43 "2019-07-11T18:07:50Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Florida has 8,436 miles of coastline and Mississippi has 359 miles. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/44 "2019-07-11T19:06:35Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Yeah, Florida basically didn’t exist as a population center until 20th century technological advances made it possible to live on top of swampland (it was the 33rd most populous state in 1910, just edging out Maine, and Miami was a tiny rural outpost). Once that happened, people flocked there. most of the sunbelt can be explained in two words:air conditioning. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/45 "2019-07-11T19:23:04Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Isn’t this true of most medium or large sized nations? In France 50 percent of the population live in 23 of the 101 departments, very similar to the U.S. result. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/46 "2019-07-11T19:27:38Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Candidates would only need to campaign in those nine states. Because that’s where the people are, not the dirt. Dirt shouldn’t count in an election. If your state is so shitty that no one wants to live there why should that give you additional electoral votes? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/47 "2019-07-11T20:48:30Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > In France 50 percent of the population live in 23 of the 101 departments, very similar to the U.S. result. A lot of France’s political problems come from the “Paris vs. the rest of the country” thing. The “yellow vest” [protests](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/europe/france-yellow-vest-protests-intl/index.html) late last year had this element. * * * Note that the biggest states don’t completely dominate the Presidential election landscape since several of them (like California and New York) are solid blue or (like Georgia and Texas) somewhat solid red. Plus Ohio and Florida are almost always in play. The 2000 election was decided by 5 electoral votes. Any one of several small changes in Gore’s campaign and he could have picked up a tiny state and won with or without Florida. (Choosing a southerner as Veep instead of Lieberman, letting Clinton campaign for him, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/48 "2019-07-11T21:04:17Z")
… Winning his own state of Tennessee… (probably impossible, but he didn’t spend a lot of time there and his “Tennessee HQ” was largely for show.) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/49 "2019-07-11T21:14:41Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Because that’s where the people are, not the dirt. Dirt shouldn’t count in an election. If your state is so shitty that no one wants to live there why should that give you additional electoral votes? Seems to me that fundamentally the issue some of you have is that we’re a federal republic, and not some kind of direct democracy. In federal republics, the states themselves have power as entities above and beyond the sum of their population. You can look at it this way… the people of Wyoming are represented by one House member as is appropriate considering the number of people in the state, but the State of Wyoming _as an entity separate from its people_ is represented by two Senators, just like every other state. Similarly, the people of California are represented by 53 House members, and the State of California as a separate entity is represented by two Senators. That’s one reason to go back to the election of Senators by the state legislatures; it reduces the confusion about the role of the Senate and Senators relative to the people. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/50 "2019-07-11T21:22:51Z")
No, our issue is that the distribution of power in this “federal republic” is unevenly distributed towards states with low population density, which is just stupid. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/51 "2019-07-11T21:39:40Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Yes. For example, it’s true that at least half of the Austrian population lives in nine of its states. (Then again, it’s also trivially true, because Austria has only nine states.) Very droll. The three largest [Austrian states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Austria) contain 57% of the country’s population, so it does seem to be true that Austrian states aren’t _quite_ as disproportionate as those of Brazil or Mexico or the U.S.A. (Of course Austria is arguably more of a “smallish” country than a “medium or large sized” one. It _is_ above the halfway mark of [this list](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/335rank.html#AU)–which includes non-independent “countries”–but an average-population country would have over 30 million people in it.) And the three most populous of [Germany’s sixteen states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany) contain half the population of Germany; 3/16 is pretty close to 9/50, too. (18.75% of the German states vs. 18% of the American states). ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/52 "2019-07-11T22:48:18Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > most of the sunbelt can be explained in two words:air conditioning. I wonder how people lived here in the sunbelt before AC. And they worked in offices wearing suits and ties or stockings/tight clothes (for women). And no AC in cars either. I guess maybe it was not so bad if you were used to it. It’s very ironic that now that we have AC many people are able to dress more casual for work, church, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/53 "2019-07-12T01:14:26Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > Our most-populated county is Los Angeles County. It has about the same number of people (6 million) as the state of Georgia. Our least-populated state is Wyoming, with 600,000 people. It has a smaller population than Madison, Wisconsin. > > Georgia and Wyoming get two senators. Los Angeles and Madison do not. Actually L.A. County has almost 10M people. You have a very old number. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![bubba001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f17d59/32.png) [@bubba001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubba001)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/54 "2019-07-12T01:40:18Z")
I was told by a native Florida guy that it would be uninhabitable without air conditioning and mosquito control. The whole state is divided into mosquito control districts. They do a pretty good job. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/55 "2019-07-12T01:47:08Z")
> [@bubba001](#): > > I was told by a native Florida guy that it would be uninhabitable without air conditioning and mosquito control. The whole state is divided into mosquito control districts. They do a pretty good job. Without air-conditioning, people slept on the fire escapes in New York during the summer. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/56 "2019-07-12T02:32:51Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > Our most-populated county is Los Angeles County. It has about the same number of people (6 million) as the state of Georgia. Our least-populated state is Wyoming, with 600,000 people. It has a smaller population than Madison, Wisconsin. > > Georgia and Wyoming get two senators. Los Angeles and Madison do not. LA has been covered. Madison has 255,000 people, which is quite a bit less than 600,000. Dane County, where Madison is located, has 540,000–still not quite up there with Wyoming’s 580k.Milwaukee would be a much better comp. Good point, not so good examples. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/57 "2019-07-12T02:39:51Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I wonder how people lived here in the sunbelt before AC. And they worked in offices wearing suits and ties or stockings/tight clothes (for women). And no AC in cars either. I guess maybe it was not so bad if you were used to it. > > It’s very ironic that now that we have AC many people are able to dress more casual for work, church, etc. I think you do get used to it, to some extent. I was in Madison, IN this past weekend, and it was upper 80s with high (70+%) humdity, and I was sweating like a pig (do pigs sweat?) when I got back home (Detroit area,) the upper 80s (with 40% humidity) didn’t seem all that bad. yes, I got sweaty, but I was mostly “meh.” I used to hate how “hot and humid” it would get here, until I experienced real humidity. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/58 "2019-07-12T10:40:47Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > LA has been covered. Madison has 255,000 people, which is quite a bit less than 600,000. Dane County, where Madison is located, has 540,000–still not quite up there with Wyoming’s 580k.Milwaukee would be a much better comp. > > Good point, not so good examples. Hold on. We can do this. We have the technology. LA County is the most-populated county. 10.5M Georgia has a population of 10.5M Wyoming has a population of 577,000 This is would not put it on the list of the 100 most populated counties. (Hudson County NJ has 634,000) This would put Wyoming’s population in the same league as Albuquerque (560,000) Wyoming would be our 33rd-largest city, if it were a city. To restate: \*\*LA County has about the same population as Georgia, but does not get two senators. Wyoming has about the same population as Albuquerque, but does get two senators. \*\* Thank you for pointing out my mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/59 "2019-07-12T13:25:15Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > No, our issue is that the distribution of power in this “federal republic” is unevenly distributed towards states with low population density, which is just stupid. You’re missing the point- of the stuff that’s apportioned by population, it IS evenly distributed, or as evenly as we can do so with a limit of 435 House members and a requirement that every state have at least one House member. The Senate does NOT represent the people. Let me repeat that- the Senate does NOT represent the people. It represents the States as separate, sovereign entities. As such, the concept is that each State is equal to all others, hence the 2 Senators allocation. That’s the Connecticut Compromise- what you’re griping about isn’t a new thing- it was there from the very beginnings of our nation. Small states were worried about being run over by the larger ones even then. I don’t have the motivation to go researching, but I’m pretty sure that’s why the House was given the power of the purse; the actual spending must be controlled by the House, and not the Senate or Executive branch. That puts more power in the proportionally elected house of Congress. And like I said before, we’re NOT a direct democracy either. What you’re griping about is about as absurd as some monarchist griping that our President doesn’t have enough power. Of course not, we’re not a monarchy. But nor are we a direct democracy either. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/60 "2019-07-12T14:27:19Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I wonder how people lived here in the sunbelt before AC. And they worked in offices wearing suits and ties or stockings/tight clothes (for women). And no AC in cars either. I guess maybe it was not so bad if you were used to it. > > It’s very ironic that now that we have AC many people are able to dress more casual for work, church, etc. I lived in the tropics in an area where air conditioning was not common. I didn’t have it at home or work. The short answer is that you get used to it fairly quickly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868.md?page=4)