A WalletHub study has found that Virginia is the most patriotic state in the country.
Looking at “military engagement” and “civic engagement” as the primary criterion for the study, Virginia was number one, in front of Alaska, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Colorado, which were in the top five.
For the military engagement portion, WalletHub looked at the number of enlisted individuals per 1,000 civilian adults between 2010 and 2015. They also looked at how many veterans there are per 1,000 civilians.
For the civic engagement portion, they looked at the percentage of voters who voted in the 2016 presidential primary and general elections, the number of Peace Corps volunteers, the state’s volunteer rate, and the number of searches done on Google for American flags and civic education information.
More on the study methodology:
To determine the most patriotic states, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 50 states across two key dimensions, including “Military Engagement” and “Civic Engagement.”
We evaluated those dimensions using 13 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest level of patriotism.
Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its total score, which we then used to rank-order all the cities in our sample.
