A new poll has revealed that most Democrat-run states are the "least free" in the entire America, with New York ranking as the least free state in the Union, followed by Hawaii and California.
Cato Institute's "Freedom in the 50 States" survey, which is conducted once every two years since 2000, released its latest edition in which they found that the top three freest states were New Hampshire, Florida, and Nevada.
According to Fox News, Cato Institute's "Freedom in the 50 States" survey rates overall freedom based on a combination of personal and economic freedoms. The poll compares states against 230 different metrics, "from taxation to debt, eminent domain laws to occupational licensing, and drug policy to educational choice," Cato Institute's website explained.
"New York has been the least free state in the country for a long time," survey authors William Ruger and Jason Sorens wrote. "In fact, the Empire State has been the worst state for freedom in every year since our data set began in 2000."
According to Yahoo! News, Ruger is a foreign policy research fellow and a vice president at the Charles Koch Institute, while Sorens serves as the director of the Center for Ethics in Business and Governance at Saint Anselm College.
The authors explained that New York's "most significant weakness" is economic freedom. They added that the state has also fallen behind on personal freedom as well. Ruger and Sorens remarked, "It belies the 'blue' state stereotype in that it is No. 50 on economic freedom and personal freedom."
The authors also underscored Hawaii's failure with economic and personal freedom, writing that the state "has long had one of the lowest levels of economic freedom in the country, but it has also slid behind on personal freedom," which is why it ranks the second least-free state in the U.S.
Ruger and Sorens wrote, "Even with its huge locational rents, Hawaii has experienced a net outflow of residents to the rest of the United States since at least the beginning of the past decade."
Gov. Sununu said that it was an honor for New Hampshire to be the most free state in the U.S., sharing, "Our primary focus here in New Hampshire has always been on opening as many doors of opportunity for our residents as possible. We ignore the politics and simply focus on delivering results that have a positive impact on the lives of Granite Staters and their families."
Meanwhile, the survey authors explained that California, the third-least free state in the U.S., is the way it is "largely because of its long-standing poor performance on economic freedom." New York, Hawaii, and California are led by Governors Kathy Hochul, David Ige, and Gavin Newsom, respectively, all of which are Democrats.
Contrastingly, New Hampshire, which is led by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, is remarkably at the top of the list of most free states in the U.S., a spot it has been vying for against Florida, another Republican state, for years. Survey authors remarked that New Hampshire placed first because "it does well in both economic freedom (third) and personal freedom (second), something that is also true of Florida."
