Washington High In ‘Best State’ Ranking By U.S. News

SEATTLE, WA - From the state's incredible mountains in the west to the rocky desert out east, Washington is a pretty great place to live. But it's not just the scenery that earned Washington a top-ten spot on the 2018 best states in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report.

In determining the rankings for 2018, U.S. News evaluated how each state ranked in 77 metrics across eight categories. The eight categories were weighted based on the average of two years of data from a national survey that asked over 30,000 respondents to prioritize each category in their state.

Washington came out in the top ten on some of the most important categories, including health care, the economy, and infrastructure.

Here’s how Washington ranked in all eight categories evaluated by U.S. News:

Crime and Corrections: 39
Economy: 3
Education: 6
Fiscal stability: 27
Health care: 2
Infrastructure: 4
Opportunity: 27
Quality of life: 21

You can find more insight on Washington and how it ranks in the various categories and subcategories here.

Overall, Iowa ranked as the best state in the U.S. because of its strong performance in the opportunity and health care categories. Minnesota ranked No. 2 and Utah ranked No. 3 on the list. U.S. News’ findings showed that states that ranked highly in the education category also ranked highly overall. Eight of the top ten states overall also ranked among the top 10 for education. Massachusetts, which ranked No.1 for education and Utah, which ranked No.3 for education placed in the top 10 states overall.

Colorado and Utah ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the economy category while Iowa ranked No. 1 for infrastructure. New Hampshire ranked No. 1 for opportunity and Maine ranked No. 1 for crime and corrections.

The top 10 states in the U.S. are:

1. Iowa
2. Minnesota
3. Utah
4. North Dakota
5. New Hampshire
6. Washington
7. Nebraska
8. Massachusetts
9. Vermont
10. Colorado

The data for the rankings came from McKinsey & Company’s Leading States Index. U.S. News ranked the categories and subcategories from 1 to 50 before creating overall rankings. (Read more about U.S. News’ methodology here.) See the full U.S. News rankings here.

By Feroze Dhanoa, Patch National Staff

Caption: North Cascades National Park seen from Maple Pass.

File photo by Neal McNamara/Patch