Somewhere between the third school pickup of the week and a dinner you’re already mentally assembling on the drive home, your phone pings. It’s a screenshot from a friend. Someone has ranked all 50 states by how much other Americans hate them – and, yes, your home state is on it. Suddenly the school run can wait.
There’s something deeply, irresistibly human about this kind of list. We love our hometowns and we complain about them in the same breath. We defend our state to outsiders and then turn around and roll our eyes at it ourselves. The state hatred rankings have become one of those data exercises that nobody technically asked for but everyone stops scrolling to read. And the 2026 version just dropped some genuinely surprising results – including the answer to a question you didn’t know you had: which state is the least hated in America?
Spoiler: it probably isn’t the one you’d guess. Before we get to that, let’s talk about how you even measure something as slippery as “state hatred” – because the methodology here is more thoughtful than the concept might suggest.
How the State Hatred Rankings Actually Work
A 2026 ranking from Splash Travels looked at three different ways to measure how much other Americans dislike a state. The first factor was how many states named a given state as the one they hate most. The second was population decline – people leaving a state with their feet is a pretty honest vote. The third was the percentage of a state’s own residents who called it the worst possible place to live.
When those three numbers get combined and ranked according to Zippia’s 2022 research – which used essentially the same framework – the most hated state is one with a big population drop, a lot of self-loathing residents, and multiple neighboring states actively calling it out. Illinois, for example, showed a population decrease of 0.54 percent. One in four of its own residents called it the absolute worst place to live.
It’s a clever approach because it captures something different from standard “best states to live” surveys. Those lists tend to measure schools, crime rates, and affordability. This one measures something more cultural – the stories we tell about each other, the grudges states carry, and the slow drift of people with their bags packed. And when you look at the results together, some clear patterns start to form.
The States with the Biggest Reputation Problems
California leads a particular kind of infamy. According to Zippia’s research, California had 9 other states identify it as the state they hate most – the highest number of any state in the country. And yet, only 6 percent of California’s own residents called it the worst state, and its population decrease was just 0.11 percent – remarkably low for a state drawing so much outside resentment. What that tells you is that Californians are mostly fine with California. Everyone else just can’t stand it.
New Jersey has a different kind of problem. Five other states named New Jersey as the state they hate most, and 10 percent of New Jersey residents agreed with them – calling their own home state the worst. That’s a state that has earned its reputation both from the outside and the inside.
Then there’s the curious case of Connecticut. None of the other 49 states actually named Connecticut as the state they hate most – and yet it still cracked the top 10 most disliked states. The reason? A full 17 percent of Connecticut’s own residents called it the worst possible state to live in. That level of internal dissatisfaction is genuinely striking for a state that most Americans outside New England barely think about. As the Splash Travels data noted, what Connecticut residents know that the rest of us don’t is an open question worth asking.
Illinois tells a similar self-inflicted story. With a population decrease of 0.54 percent and 25 percent of residents calling it the worst state, Illinois shows up near the very top of the most disliked states – not because the whole country is piling on, but because its own people are thoroughly fed up.
The Neighbor Grudges Are Real
One of the most entertaining corners of this whole exercise is watching states target their neighbors. Tennessee and Indiana are the two states that specifically named Kentucky as the state they hate most. That’s not a random coincidence – it’s a very specific regional rivalry playing out in data form. Anyone who’s driven through the tri-state area probably isn’t surprised.
Massachusetts, meanwhile, has its own axe to grind. Massachusetts was identified in the Splash Travels study as the state that hates New York the most. Which, if you’ve spent any time in Boston, tracks perfectly.
The New York-New England friction, the Kentucky-Tennessee animosity, the California-everyone else tension – what you start to see in these state reputation rankings is that geographic proximity breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds opinions. Strong ones. States that share a border and a rivalry have had decades to build up their grievances. The further a state is from you, the harder it is to hate it with any real conviction.
Why Is Colorado the Least Disliked State?
Here’s where the 50 state hatred rankings get genuinely interesting. The question of which state is the least hated in America has a clear answer according to this data: Colorado.
According to the Splash Travels 2026 study, Colorado ranked as the least hated state in the country. The data is striking in its simplicity: not a single one of the other 49 states named Colorado as the state they hate most. Zero. None. In a country where California is getting side-eyed by 9 states simultaneously, Colorado is sitting quietly with a universal pass.
So what’s Colorado’s secret? As Colorado-focused radio station K99 reported in 2025, Colorado holds the distinction of being the only state in the nation for which no other state registers as predominantly hating it. The combination of mountain appeal, outdoor culture, and genuine geographic centrality has made it almost impossible to point at Colorado and say “that’s the problem.” It doesn’t carry the cultural baggage of California or the political lightning-rod status of Texas. It’s not associated with any single polarizing identity the way some states are. It just… sits there, broadly inoffensive, with gorgeous scenery.
That said, the “least hated” badge comes with some caveats. Despite its Colorado ranked least disliked state status in this study, Colorado dropped to 19th place in U.S. News and World Report’s 2025 best states rankings, having spent more than a decade in the top ten. The same reporting noted growing resident discontent, with more people leaving Colorado for Texas, even as it kept its title as the least disliked state nationally.
That gap – between how outsiders see a state and how residents experience it – is one of the most interesting things this data surfaces. Colorado is universally liked by everyone who doesn’t live there, and increasingly questioned by some of the people who do. Cost of living, housing affordability, and crime rates are all factors dragging on the lived experience even as the reputation stays golden. According to reporting from Denver’s local Fox affiliate KDVR, Colorado ranked 35th for cost of living and 45th for housing affordability in a recent WalletHub analysis – and sat at 44th for violent crime rates and 48th for property crime rates.
The States Where People Are Voting With Their Feet
Population decline is one of the three metrics in these state reputation rankings, and it’s worth taking a closer look at what it actually tells us. When people leave a state, they’re often doing it slowly and reluctantly – selling a house, finding a new job, enrolling kids in a different school. It’s not a snap decision. So when multiple states are consistently losing population year over year, something real is going on.
Illinois saw a 0.54 percent population decrease, making it one of the fastest-shrinking states in the country in the period Zippia analyzed. That’s an enormous number when you factor in how large the state’s population already is. New York isn’t far behind, and the data reflects the same story playing out in expensive northeastern and midwestern cities – young families doing the math and deciding the cost isn’t worth it.
The states at the bottom of the best states to live rankings tend to reinforce this picture. RoadSnacks’ 2025 analysis found New Mexico and Louisiana at the bottom of their worst states list, with New Mexico taking the very last spot. By that analysis, New Mexico is, by far, the worst state in the entire country for 2025. Quality of life issues, including crime rates and limited economic opportunity, show up repeatedly in states where population outflows are highest.
Mississippi paints a similar picture. Research from WalletHub found that Mississippi ranked as the sixth worst state to live in on a comprehensive 2024 quality-of-life ranking, which connects to its position in the state hatred rankings as well. People don’t dislike a state in a vacuum – the data usually reflects something happening on the ground.
The Self-Loathing Factor
Perhaps the most unexpected thread running through all of this is how many people genuinely don’t like where they live. Not just mildly disappointed – actively calling it the worst place in the country.
One in four Illinoisans called their state the absolute worst place to live. Connecticut had 17 percent of its own residents saying the same. These aren’t small numbers. For context, that’s roughly the same percentage of people who routinely say they’re dissatisfied with their jobs – and we all know what happens when that number gets too high. People start looking.
What drives this kind of local discontent? It’s rarely one thing. It’s usually the slow accumulation of expensive housing, limited opportunity, feeling politically at odds with where you live, or simply the grinding sense that things are getting worse instead of better. The data on Illinois lines up neatly: the negativity there could be partially attributed to animosity between politically liberal Chicago and the heavily conservative rural parts of the state that make up most of its geography. A state pulling hard in two directions at once is a state where a lot of people feel like they lost.
For families specifically, this matters a lot. Where you live shapes your kids’ schools, your commute, your access to healthcare, your neighbors, and your general sense of whether life is improving or stagnating. WalletHub’s 2026 research on the best states to raise a family compared all 50 states across five dimensions – family fun, health and safety, education and child care, affordability, and socioeconomics – using 50 different metrics to come up with its rankings. The states that perform poorly across those dimensions tend to be the same ones showing up repeatedly in the most-disliked lists.
What This Tells You
The state hatred rankings are more than just a curiosity or a way to start an argument at Thanksgiving. They’re actually a decent proxy for something more concrete: where people feel like life is working and where they feel like it isn’t.
Colorado’s position as the Colorado ranked least disliked state in the 2026 Splash Travels survey reflects something real about its external reputation – the mountains, the lifestyle, the general vibe that people associate with it from the outside. That reputation is durable. Even as more Coloradans express frustration with rising costs and crime, the state’s image in the wider American imagination remains remarkably clean. It’s the state almost nobody has a beef with. That’s genuinely rare.
The most disliked states, on the other hand, tend to share a common thread: either they’ve made themselves a national target through political identity and cultural visibility (Texas, California, New York), or they’re dealing with serious quality-of-life challenges that are driving both residents and reputations down (Illinois, New Jersey, Mississippi). In some cases, it’s both at once.
If there’s one practical takeaway from the 50 state hatred rankings, it’s this: reputation and reality don’t always match up on the same timeline. Colorado is beloved from the outside while quietly struggling on some key metrics from the inside. Connecticut is seen as unremarkable by other states while its own residents are loudly unhappy. And Illinois, despite sitting near the top of the most-disliked list, was ranked third in the nation for median family income and family fun in separate 2026 research. A state can be genuinely frustrating to live in and still have a lot going for it.
For parents trying to figure out where to build a life, the honest answer is that no ranking – whether it measures hate, livability, or anything else – tells the whole story. But they’re a good starting point for the right conversation.
Disclaimer: This article was written by the author with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor for accuracy and clarity.