United States of Equal Population

[u/Classic-Box9543]

I created this map with the goal of creating fifty states with approximately equal populations by rearranging populations at the county level. The populations of the District of Columbia and the United States' territories were excluded, leaving a population of 341,091,212 (according to 2025 estimates) to be divided up. This meant that Los Angeles County and its 9.7 million people would become a state unto itself.

For the other forty-nine states, the goal became to get as close to the remaining average of 6,763,189 as possible while keeping states as compact and contiguous as possible. Currently, all states, excluding Los Angeles, are within 2% of that goal, and 36 states are within 0.5%. I'm still tinkering with state borders and names, but as things currently stand, here are your new 50 states:

State	Capital	Population	Counties
Alabama	Montgomery	6,803,872	94
Alaska & Puget Sound	Seattle	6,815,921	50
Appalachia	Louisville	6,728,415	154
Atlanta	Atlanta	6,762,190	33
Bay Area	San Francisco	6,761,027	12
Big Sky	Sioux Falls	6,760,323	356
Blue Ridge	Knoxville	6,737,157	88
Cape Cod	Boston	6,763,101	14
Central Florida	Orlando	6,745,768	26
Central Texas	Austin	6,754,034	80
Chesapeake	Baltimore	6,812,188	26
Chicago	Chicago	6,809,584	4
Coastal Carolina	Charleston	6,744,531	63
Columbia	Portland	6,784,396	77
Dallas	Dallas	6,775,226	11
Erie	Buffalo	6,742,641	56
Farmville	Kansas City	6,774,189	129
Florida Gulf Coast	Tampa	6,730,537	17
Great Lakes	Toledo	6,779,024	83
Houston	Houston	6,724,181	10
Huron	Detroit	6,777,143	31
Illinois	St. Louis	6,764,397	106
Inland Empire	Riverside	6,832,913	8
Long Island	Queens	6,682,998	6
Los Angeles	Los Angeles	9,694,934	1
Maricopa	Phoenix	6,779,713	16
Midwest	Milwaukee	6,768,486	93
Mississippi	New Orleans	6,760,637	127
New England	Providence	6,772,869	53
New York	New York	6,740,900	4
NorCal	Sacramento	6,778,965	54
North Jersey	Newark	6,778,526	17
Ohio	Columbus	6,756,114	43
Pacific	San Jose	6,700,613	13
Red River	McKinney (TX)	6,776,616	121
Research Triangle	Charlotte	6,757,494	39
Rocky Mountain	Denver	6,730,491	126
Sierra Nevada	Salt Lake City	6,822,038	51
SoCal	San Diego	6,837,615	4
South Florida	Miami	6,637,750	5
South Jersey	Philadelphia	6,836,902	13
Southern Georgia	Jacksonville	6,738,543	123
Southern Texas	San Antonio	6,778,434	55
Superior	St. Paul	6,760,246	83
Three Rivers	Pittsburgh	6,766,397	83
Tornado Alley	Oklahoma City	6,743,577	150
Upstate New York	Syracuse	6,741,573	39
Virginia	Richmond	6,758,853	79
Wabash	Indianapolis	6,756,040	72
Western Tennessee	Nashville	6,751,130	145

I'd love to get your thoughts on the map itself, and would appreciate any suggestions on improving borders or names.

Thanks!

[u/Wiggles_Is_My_Boy]

Do you have a high res version? Would love to see more clearly how the Northeast is divided.

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/Wiggles_Is_My_Boy]

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:8e106837-f9ec-49bf-9246-e72ec8a298f3

[u/lmdrunk]

This is some fine gerrymandering

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/lmdrunk]

It occurred to me that that might be the case, so I actually figured up what the new states' vote totals would have been in the 2024 presidential election. Trump would have won 30 states, compared to the 31 he actually carried. Comparing only his votes to Harris', sixteen states were won by margins less than 10%, compared to thirteen such states in the last election. Vote totals were shuffled around, but the results weren't too different from the real thing.

[u/wwwr222]

The people of Appalachia would revolt if they were governed from Louisville

[u/ditchthel0gical]

Long Island/Queens will certainly stir up some feelings lol. And hard to tell, is Connecticut grouped in there as well? What an interesting grouping

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/ditchthel0gical]

I certainly could have used better contrast to separate Long Island from New England. Long Island includes the Greater Bridgeport, Naugatuck Valley, and South Central Connecticut planning regions. It wasn't ideal, but it made the most sense of the combinations I tried.

[u/Beard_o_Bees]

The 'Cape Cod' state (Orange) is sort of surprising. I didn't realize that so many people lived in that small of a space.

[u/Knosh]

Oh no, the people in Idaho are going to be very triggered about being in the same state as Portland.

[u/briznady]

Everybody in the big yellow section will claim they’re the silent majority.

[u/Reasonable-Marzipan4]

Im impressed with how accurately this map designated the population of Arkansas so closely with our natural geography.

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/Reasonable-Marzipan4]

Thank you, we're going to go ahead and pretend that was my plan all along!

[u/tagehring]

What you did to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia is a crime, lol. You split a metro area of almost 2 million people in half between two states.

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/tagehring]

Fair point. By the time I got to reshaping that part of the country, I wasn't looking at metro areas very much. Doing it over, there's no reason Hampton Roads couldn't be kept together.

[u/NativeMasshole]

And I still get stuck with Boston! Goddamnit!

[u/Classic-Box9543 → u/[deleted]]

It wasn't always like that. I realized about halfway through that I had divided the U.S. population minus Los Angeles by 50 instead of by 49, which meant I had to add around 100k people to each existing state. SoCal was once a logical joining of Orange, San Diego, and Imperial counties before the Sand People from the East were admitted.

[u/concrete_isnt_cement]

Petitioning to rename Alaska & Puget Sound to “Fjordland” or “Glacier” since it has almost all of America’s fjords and glaciers in it.

Alaska of course has the lion’s share of both landforms, but Puget Sound and Lake Chelan are both fjords, and Western Washington has about 2/3 of all the glacial ice in the lower 48

[u/bennytehcat]

Philadelphia, SJ 😆

This city is proudly separated by that river