Five of the seven states widely expected to be political battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential election have populations very much like that of the U.S. overall, in a range of demographic and socioeconomic measures.
For decades, the presidential selection season has begun with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But in recent years, that practice has been criticized for giving lead-off status in a nationwide election to two of the smallest and least racially and ethnically diverse states.
Those two states kicked off the election process again in 2024, though the Democratic Party did not officially participate in the New Hampshire primary, which President Joe Biden won as a write-in candidate.
Instead, the first official primary set by Democrats was in South Carolina, a state more like the U.S. than New Hampshire, according to our analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Our research has found that there are states even more like the U.S. as a whole – and in fact New Hampshire is one of those least like the country overall. Our work provides a look at which states have a significant political voice in an election season, which ones don’t, and which ones might be worth paying more attention to.
Examining population data
Using data from the 2022 American Community Survey, a nationwide questionnaire survey conducted by the Census Bureau, we compared each state to the nation as a whole based on five characteristics:
Racial and ethnic breakdown: the share of people who reported their race and ethnicity as Latino, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, white, some other race, or two or more races;
Age-gender distribution: the share of people identified as males or females in various age groups from 0 to over 85, noting that the Census Bureau only offers two options for gender identity;
Educational attainment: the share of people with grade school or high school education, some college, or a range of academic degrees;
Household income: the share of households reporting their income in various ranges from less than US$10,000 to $200,0000 or more;
Occupational distribution: the share of employed workers in various broad job sectors like farming, fishing and forestry; construction and extraction; or sales and related occupations.
For each characteristic, we used a statistical method called the dissimilarity index to determine how similar or dissimilar each state was from the country’s demographic and socioeconomic profile. A dissimilarity index score of zero would indicate that the state is exactly like the whole country. A score of 100 would indicate that it could not get any more different.
We ranked each state’s scores for each characteristic and then averaged those rankings to list the states in an overall order from most similar to most dissimilar.
Finding the similarities
It turns out that in 2022, Illinois was the state most like the entire country. Illinois resembled the nation more than any other state in its race-ethnicity breakdown, age-gender distribution and household income distribution. It was second-most like the country in terms of educational distribution, and fourth-closest in occupational distribution.
This was personally interesting to us because in the summer of 2009, one of us, Rogelio Sáenz, drove through Illinois, and was reminded by a road sign of the old rhetorical question, “Will it play in Peoria?” As far back as the 1880s, theater producers and others considered the Illinois city of Peoria a microcosm of the nation. In politics, the phrase was adopted to evoke “an ideal place to take the ‘pulse of the nation’ on political campaigns and proposed legislation,” as Peoria Magazine wrote in 2009.
Sáenz wondered back then whether the saying was based on any connection to reality. And it turns out that it is, at least if you look at the state Peoria is in: The population of Illinois is very like the population of the U.S. as a whole.
Five of the seven states widely expected to be political battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential election have populations very much like that of the U.S. overall, in a range of demographic and socioeconomic measures.
For decades, the presidential selection season has begun with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But in recent years, that practice has been criticized for giving lead-off status in a nationwide election to two of the smallest and least racially and ethnically diverse states.
Those two states kicked off the election process again in 2024, though the Democratic Party did not officially participate in the New Hampshire primary, which President Joe Biden won as a write-in candidate.
Instead, the first official primary set by Democrats was in South Carolina, a state more like the U.S. than New Hampshire, according to our analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Two Philippine officials say that American and Filipino security officials have agreed to keep a U.S. mid-range missile system in the northern Philippines indefinitely to boost deterrance despite China’s expressions of alarm
This year’s vice presidential candidates both entered the spotlight this summer as relative political unknowns — but as they prepare to address their biggest audience yet in next week’s debate, Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance is less popular among voters than his Democratic rival, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has dissolved parliament and called for a parliamentary election in an effort to consolidate his mandate following his weekend election victory