Friendliest States

• Minnesota is ranked the most polite state in the country, and New York the least, on this Politeness Index.
• The ranking has no official scorekeeper: it comes from a social-media vote and tipping rates, not a survey authority or government data, and carries no data year.
• Politeness and reported happiness barely move together: how polite a state is ranked explains only about 3% of where it lands on happiness, and the link is not statistically meaningful.
• Tennessee is ranked second most polite but sits near the bottom for happiness, while low-ranked Delaware is among the happiest states.

The short answer to the question in the title is this: Minnesota is ranked the friendliest, or most polite, state, and New York sits at the very bottom of the list. Tennessee and South Carolina round out the top three. That is the order this Politeness Index puts the 50 states in, from a near-mythic "Minnesota Nice" reputation at the top to the big-city brusqueness New York is stereotyped for at the bottom.

Here is the thing to know before reading any of it as fact. There is no government agency or research body that measures how polite a state is. This ranking matches the World Population Review "Friendliest States" list, which is built from a Big 7 Travel survey of social-media followers plus average tipping rates by state. It carries no data year, and the page itself calls such comparisons "anecdotal and unscientific."

So read the table as a popularity contest about manners, not a verdict on character. A state near the top is perceived as more polite by this one soft measure. A state near the bottom is not "rude" in any measured sense. It simply drew fewer votes in a survey that asked people for an impression, not a count of anything.

If a state is genuinely friendly, you might expect its residents to be reasonably content. The data does not back that hunch. Across all 50 states, where a state lands on politeness explains only about 3% of where it lands on happiness, and the relationship is so weak it fails the basic test for statistical meaning. Politeness and happiness, as measured here, are close to unrelated.

The mismatches are easy to spot. Tennessee is ranked the second most polite state in the country, yet on the 2024 WalletHub Happiness Index it falls all the way to 47th, with a score of 40.3. Delaware runs the opposite way: it sits near the bottom of the politeness list at 48th, but its happiness score of 60.4 places it among the five happiest states in the data.

Those happiness numbers come from a very different kind of measurement. WalletHub scores each state across three dimensions, emotional and physical well-being, work environment, and community, using 30 metrics on a 100-point scale of survey and statistical data. The politeness list, by contrast, is built on impressions, which is part of why the two so rarely line up.

Even the happiest state breaks the pattern. Hawaii leads the country on happiness at 68.7, well clear of everyone else, but it lands only in the middle of the politeness list. The states people vote as friendliest are, by and large, not the states reporting the best lives.

There is a regional shape to the politeness vote, and it has a familiar cultural logic. On average, Midwest states rank as the most polite, and Northeast states rank as the least. That tracks two well-worn reputations: the reserved, courteous "Minnesota Nice" of the Upper Midwest, and the blunter style associated with the urban Northeast.

"Minnesota Nice" is usually traced to the Scandinavian and Lutheran heritage of the region's settlers, a culture of understatement and conflict avoidance. It is worth noting that some historians argue the label is partly a modern invention, a marketing myth that made the state feel distinctive. The top of the list also leans South, where Southern hospitality, a tradition built around politeness, charm, and looking after guests, carries states like Tennessee and South Carolina.

The catch is that the polite regions are not the happy ones. The Northeast, ranked the least polite on average, actually reports the highest average happiness of any region. The South, strong on the politeness list, reports the lowest. The map of good manners and the map of good lives are drawn differently, which is the regional version of the disconnect the state-by-state numbers already showed.

It helps to know exactly what produced this order, because the inputs are unusual. The ranking rests on two things: a Big 7 Travel survey in which 2.5 million social-media followers voted on which states felt friendliest, and Zippia's figures for how much each state tips. Neither is a measurement of behavior in any rigorous sense.

The two inputs do not even agree with each other. Delaware has the highest average tipping rate in the country at 21.8%, ahead of top-ranked Minnesota at 19.2%, yet Delaware still lands 48th on the friendliness vote. If generosity at the table signals friendliness, the vote did not reflect it.

Other rankings that try to measure politeness land somewhere else entirely. A Preply analysis using its own scoring places Minnesota only 11th, not first, and names Arkansas the most polite state in the country, even though Arkansas sits near the bottom of this list. When two reasonable methods crown different winners, the honest conclusion is that no single "friendliest state" exists to be found.

None of this makes the ranking useless. It is a fair snapshot of which states carry friendly reputations, and reputations matter for tourism, relocation, and regional pride. It is just not the same thing as a measurement, and the data underneath it does not pretend otherwise.