Tourists Rate Illinois as Much Nicer than those Rude Missourians

It's hard to be objective about whether a place is rude or nice. The best gauge just might be how tourists perceive a place. If that's accurate then Illinois is much nicer than Missouri based on some just updated statistics.

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I want to be clear that I'm not taking sides in this debate. I have Missouri and Illinois friends and family and they are swell people. Really. But, World Population Review has just shared their newly-updated rankings of the nicest states.

How did they decide who's nice and who's rude?

There were 2 different surveys combined into one. On one hand, they had Big 7 Travel quiz their more than 2 million followers on which state is nicest. They also baked in a Zippia list of which states tip the best. I would debate that's not really a metric that measures "niceness", but that's just my opinion.

With all the numbers crunched, Illinois came in as the 14th nicest state while Missouri grumpily landed as the 22nd. Bah humbug.

I'll add an anecdotal note. There was a state which I'll not name which my family visited years ago that seemed so nice so we chose to live there. What we found is that our neighbors were putrid. We'd regularly get flipped off going down one of the main roads there. Awful. My point is that maybe tourists really CAN'T accurately gauge who's nice or not.

I'd recommend taking this ranking with a grain of salt and filing it away with all the other internet "lists".