Misc
Chart: The Population Rank of Every U.S. State Over 100 Years
The Population Rank of Every U.S. State Over 100 Years
“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”
Popularized by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New-York Tribune, these words formed one of the great catchphrases at the height of the Manifest Destiny era in the 19th century.
Although that period is still a few chapters back in the history books, the fact is the West Coast is still relatively new today. Los Angeles was only incorporated in 1850, Portland in 1851, and Seattle in 1869.
And throughout the 20th century – Americans were moving westward in droves, ultimately culminating in California taking over the title of the most populous state in the union by the year 1960.
Population Rank by State
Today’s visualization is a bump chart from Aaron Penne, and it shows the population rank of U.S. states and D.C. over the timeframe of a century (1917-2017) using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
When a state passes another in population in a given year, it “bumps” the other state from that place in the ranking. Big movers are also highlighted in orange (up) and black (down) on the graph.
Let’s look at the numbers for the first year on the graph, which is 1917:
Rank | State | Population (1917) |
---|---|---|
#1 | New York | 9,993,000 |
#2 | Pennsylvania | 8,578,000 |
#3 | Illinois | 6,313,000 |
#4 | Ohio | 5,510,000 |
#5 | Texas | 4,563,000 |
#6 | Massachusetts | 3,738,000 |
#7 | Missouri | 3,470,000 |
#8 | Michigan | 3,451,000 |
#9 | California | 3,171,000 |
#10 | New Jersey | 2,976,000 |
#11 | Indiana | 2,910,000 |
#12 | Georgia | 2,885,000 |
#13 | Wisconsin | 2,587,000 |
#14 | North Carolina | 2,546,000 |
#15 | Kentucky | 2,421,000 |
#16 | Iowa | 2,382,000 |
#17 | Alabama | 2,361,000 |
#18 | Tennessee | 2,331,000 |
#19 | Minnesota | 2,329,000 |
#20 | Virginia | 2,313,000 |
#21 | Oklahoma | 1,960,000 |
#22 | Mississippi | 1,820,000 |
#23 | Lousiana | 1,795,000 |
#24 | Kansas | 1,748,000 |
#25 | Arkansas | 1,737,000 |
#26 | South Carolina | 1,675,000 |
#27 | West Virginia | 1,439,000 |
#28 | Maryland | 1,428,000 |
#29 | Connecticut | 1,327,000 |
#30 | Washington | 1,287,000 |
#31 | Nebraska | 1,285,000 |
#32 | Colorado | 910,000 |
#33 | Florida | 895,000 |
#34 | Maine | 777,000 |
#35 | Oregon | 763,000 |
#36 | North Dakota | 661,000 |
#37 | Rhode Island | 606,000 |
#38 | South Dakota | 599,000 |
#39 | Montana | 505,000 |
#40 | New Hampshire | 447,000 |
#41 | Utah | 444,000 |
#42 | Idaho | 413,000 |
#43 | District of Columbia | 385,000 |
#44 | Vermont | 372,000 |
#45 | New Mexico | 361,000 |
#46 | Arizona | 311,000 |
#47 | Delaware | 222,000 |
#48 | Wyoming | 186,000 |
#49 | Nevada | 81,000 |
New York led the pack with just short of 10 million people, which made up 10% of the population of the country as a whole. Meanwhile, California had only 3.2 million people – and amazingly, Nevada only had 81,000 people in 1917.
Now let’s jump forward 50 years to 1967, when the U.S. population was closer to 200 million.
Rank | State | Population (1967) |
---|---|---|
#1 | California | 19,176,000 |
#2 | New York | 17,935,000 |
#3 | Pennsylvania | 11,681,000 |
#4 | Illinois | 10,947,000 |
#5 | Texas | 10,599,000 |
#6 | Ohio | 10,414,000 |
#7 | Michigan | 8,630,000 |
#8 | New Jersey | 6,928,000 |
#9 | Florida | 6,242,000 |
#10 | Massachusetts | 5,594,000 |
#11 | Indiana | 5,053,000 |
#12 | North Carolina | 4,952,000 |
#13 | Missouri | 4,539,000 |
#14 | Virginia | 4,508,000 |
#15 | Georgia | 4,408,000 |
#16 | Wisconsin | 4,303,000 |
#17 | Tennessee | 3,859,000 |
#18 | Maryland | 3,757,000 |
#19 | Minnesota | 3,659,000 |
#20 | Louisiana | 3,581,000 |
#21 | Alabama | 3,458,000 |
#22 | Washington | 3,174,000 |
#23 | Kentucky | 3,172,000 |
#24 | Connecticut | 2,935,000 |
#25 | Iowa | 2,793,000 |
#26 | South Carolina | 2,533,000 |
#27 | Oklahoma | 2,489,000 |
#28 | Mississippi | 2,228,000 |
#29 | Kansas | 2,197,000 |
#30 | Colorado | 2,053,000 |
#31 | Oregon | 1,979,000 |
#32 | Arkansas | 1,901,000 |
#33 | West Virginia | 1,769,000 |
#34 | Arizona | 1,646,000 |
#35 | Nebraska | 1,457,000 |
#36 | Utah | 1,019,000 |
#37 | Maine | 1,004,000 |
#38 | New Mexico | 1,000,000 |
#39 | Rhode Island | 909,000 |
#40 | District of Columbia | 791,000 |
#41 | Hawaii | 723,000 |
#42 | Montana | 701,000 |
#43 | New Hampshire | 697,000 |
#44 | Idaho | 688,000 |
#45 | South Dakota | 671,000 |
#46 | North Dakota | 626,000 |
#47 | Delaware | 525,000 |
#48 | Nevada | 449,000 |
#49 | Vermont | 423,000 |
#50 | Wyoming | 322,000 |
#51 | Alaska | 278,000 |
In just half of a century, California gained 16 million people, and jumped to the #1 spot in the process. That’s a 504% increase over its 1917 population.
The Largest Increases in Population
For a final table data, we’ll show you the 2017 state populations compared to the 1917 state populations.
The table is sorted by the percentage increase over the course of that 100 years of time.
Rank | State | Population (1917) | Population (2017) | % Increase |
---|---|---|---|---|
#1 | Nevada | 81,000 | 2,998,039 | 3,601% |
#2 | Florida | 895,000 | 20,984,400 | 2,245% |
#3 | Arizona | 311,000 | 7,016,270 | 2,156% |
#4 | California | 3,171,000 | 39,536,653 | 1,147% |
#5 | Utah | 444,000 | 3,101,833 | 599% |
#6 | Texas | 4,563,000 | 28,304,596 | 520% |
#7 | Colorado | 910,000 | 5,607,154 | 516% |
#8 | New Mexico | 361,000 | 2,088,070 | 478% |
#9 | Washington | 1,287,000 | 7,405,743 | 475% |
#10 | Oregon | 763,000 | 4,142,776 | 443% |
#11 | Delaware | 222,000 | 961,939 | 333% |
#12 | Maryland | 1,428,000 | 6,052,177 | 324% |
#13 | Idaho | 413,000 | 1,716,943 | 316% |
#14 | North Carolina | 2,546,000 | 10,273,419 | 304% |
#15 | Virginia | 2,313,000 | 8,470,020 | 266% |
#16 | Georgia | 2,885,000 | 10,429,379 | 262% |
#17 | Wyoming | 186,000 | 579,315 | 211% |
#18 | New Jersey | 2,976,000 | 9,005,644 | 203% |
#19 | New Hampshire | 447,000 | 1,342,795 | 200% |
#20 | South Carolina | 1,675,000 | 5,024,369 | 200% |
#21 | Michigan | 3,451,000 | 9,962,311 | 189% |
#22 | Tennessee | 2,331,000 | 6,715,984 | 188% |
#23 | Connecticut | 1,327,000 | 3,588,184 | 170% |
#24 | Lousiana | 1,795,000 | 4,684,333 | 161% |
#25 | Minnesota | 2,329,000 | 5,576,606 | 139% |
#26 | Indiana | 2,910,000 | 6,666,818 | 129% |
#27 | Wisconsin | 2,587,000 | 5,795,483 | 124% |
#28 | Ohio | 5,510,000 | 11,658,609 | 112% |
#29 | Montana | 505,000 | 1,050,493 | 108% |
#30 | Alabama | 2,361,000 | 4,874,747 | 106% |
#31 | Illinois | 6,313,000 | 12,802,023 | 103% |
#32 | Oklahoma | 1,960,000 | 3,930,864 | 101% |
#33 | New York | 9,993,000 | 19,849,399 | 99% |
#34 | Kentucky | 2,421,000 | 4,454,189 | 84% |
#35 | Massachusetts | 3,738,000 | 6,859,819 | 84% |
#36 | District of Columbia | 385,000 | 693,972 | 80% |
#37 | Missouri | 3,470,000 | 6,113,532 | 76% |
#38 | Rhode Island | 606,000 | 1,059,639 | 75% |
#39 | Arkansas | 1,737,000 | 3,004,279 | 73% |
#40 | Maine | 777,000 | 1,335,907 | 72% |
#41 | Vermont | 372,000 | 623,657 | 68% |
#42 | Kansas | 1,748,000 | 2,913,123 | 67% |
#43 | Mississippi | 1,820,000 | 2,984,100 | 64% |
#44 | Nebraska | 1,285,000 | 1,920,076 | 49% |
#45 | Pennsylvania | 8,578,000 | 12,805,537 | 49% |
#46 | South Dakota | 599,000 | 869,666 | 45% |
#47 | Iowa | 2,382,000 | 3,145,711 | 32% |
#48 | West Virginia | 1,439,000 | 1,815,857 | 26% |
#49 | North Dakota | 661,000 | 755,393 | 14% |
#50 | Alaska | 739,795 | n/a | |
#51 | Hawaii | 1,427,538 | n/a |
Not surprisingly, Nevada takes the cake with a 3,601% gain, going from 81,000 people to today’s 2,998,039.
Meanwhile, North Dakota had the smallest gain – it only added 14% more people over a whole century of time.
Countries
Charted: The Number of Democracies Globally
How many democracies does the world have? This visual shows the change since 1945 and the top nations becoming more (and less) democratic.

Charted: The Number of Democracies Globally
The end of World War II in 1945 was a turning point for democracies around the world.
Before this critical turning point in geopolitics, democracies made up only a small number of the world’s countries, both legally and in practice. However, over the course of the next six decades, the number of democratic nations would more than quadruple.
Interestingly, studies have found that this trend has recently reversed as of the 2010s, with democracies and non-democracies now in a deadlock.
In this visualization, Staffan Landin uses data from V-DEMโs Electoral Democratic Index (EDI) to highlight the changing face of global politics over the past two decades and the nations that contributed the most to this change.
The Methodology
V-DEM’s EDI attempts to measure democratic development in a comprehensive way, through the contributions of 3,700 experts from countries around the world.
Instead of relying on each nation’s legally recognized system of government, the EDI analyzes the level of electoral democracy in countries on a range of indicators, including:
- Free and fair elections
- Rule of law
- Alternative sources of information and association
- Freedom of expression
Countries are assigned a score on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating a higher level of democracy. Each is also categorized into four types of functional government, from liberal and electoral democracies to electoral and closed autocracies.
Which Countries Have Declined the Most?
The EDI found that numerous countries around the world saw declines in democracy over the past two decades. Here are the 10 countries that saw the steepest decline in EDI score since 2010:
Country | Democracy Index (2010) | Democracy Index (2022) | Points Lost |
---|---|---|---|
๐ญ๐บ Hungary | 0.80 | 0.46 | -34 |
๐ต๐ฑ Poland | 0.89 | 0.59 | -30 |
๐ท๐ธ Serbia | 0.61 | 0.34 | -27 |
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye | 0.55 | 0.28 | -27 |
๐ฎ๐ณ India | 0.71 | 0.44 | -27 |
๐ฒ๐ฑ Mali | 0.51 | 0.25 | -26 |
๐น๐ญ Thailand | 0.44 | 0.20 | -24 |
๐ฆ๐ซ Afghanistan | 0.38 | 0.16 | -22 |
๐ง๐ท Brazil | 0.88 | 0.66 | -22 |
๐ง๐ฏ Benin | 0.64 | 0.42 | -22 |
Central and Eastern Europe was home to three of the countries seeing the largest declines in democracy. Hungary, Poland, and Serbia lead the table, with Hungary and Serbia in particular dropping below scores of 0.5.
Some of the world’s largest countries by population also decreased significantly, including India and Brazil. Across most of the top 10, the “freedom of expression” indicator was hit particularly hard, with notable increases in media censorship to be found in Afghanistan and Brazil.
Countries Becoming More Democratic
Here are the 10 countries that saw the largest increase in EDI score since 2010:
Country | Democracy Index (2010) | Democracy Index (2022) | Points Gained |
---|---|---|---|
๐ฆ๐ฒ Armenia | 0.34 | 0.74 | +40 |
๐ซ๐ฏ Fiji | 0.14 | 0.40 | +26 |
๐ฌ๐ฒ The Gambia | 0.25 | 0.50 | +25 |
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles | 0.45 | 0.67 | +22 |
๐ฒ๐ฌ Madagascar | 0.28 | 0.48 | +20 |
๐น๐ณ Tunisia | 0.40 | 0.56 | +16 |
๐ฑ๐ฐ Sri Lanka | 0.42 | 0.57 | +15 |
๐ฌ๐ผ Guinea-Bissau | 0.41 | 0.56 | +15 |
๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova | 0.59 | 0.74 | +15 |
๐ณ๐ต Nepal | 0.46 | 0.59 | +13 |
Armenia, Fiji, and Seychelles saw significant improvement in the autonomy of their electoral management bodies in the last 10 years. Partially as a result, both Armenia and Seychelles have seen their scores rise above 0.5.
The Gambia also saw great improvement across many election indicators, including the quality of voter registries, vote buying, and election violence. It was one of five African countries to make the top 10 most improved democracies.
With the total number of democracies and non-democracies almost tied over the past four years, it is hard to predict the political atmosphere in the future.
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