What Are The Smartest (And Dumbest) States In America?

By MARC TORRENCE (Patch National Staff)

What are the smartest and dumbest states in America?

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tried to take a stab at this Thursday, speaking at a rally in Iowa. His metric of choice? Polling data. (Roughly interpreted — but not that roughly: Where he’s ahead in the polls, voters are smart; where he’s behind, voters are stupid.)

After falling behind to Ben Carson in state polling, Trump now infamously declared, “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” in front of voters in — yep — Iowa.

Judge that how you will on the smart-stupid scale when you consider that Iowa is a crucial early voting state.

But how stupid, actually, are the people of Iowa? The Washington Post tried to find out using readily available data. Turns out Iowa is pretty smart. Like the eighth-smartest state in the country.

Here are the Post’s top five smartest states in America:

1. Massachusetts

2. Minnesota

3. New Hampshire

4. Connecticut

5. Wisconsin

And the five at the bottom, per the Post?

50. Hawaii

49. Nevada

48. Mississippi

47. Alabama

46. Florida

These lists seem to come out at least once a week, all using different data and criteria. So how did the Post come up with theirs?

They looked at four major metrics — a 2006 state IQ study, 2015 SAT scores by state,2015 ACT scores by state and the U.S. Census’ percentage of college graduates by state.

“To create an intelligence score, we determined the percentage-point difference between a state’s score and the national median score,” the Post explains. “Then, since IQ seemed to be the most on-the-nose metric, we doubled that value and then added it all up.”

• For the full state list, check out the Post’s full rankings here.