America redrawn: 50 states of equal population

Every region below holds roughly 6.7 million people — one fiftieth of the country. The faint lines are the real state borders. Notice how many "states" the Northeast corridor needs, and how few fit in the entire Mountain West.

≈ 6.7M

people per region — 38 of the 49 divisible regions land within ±5% of the target, 44 within ±8%

1 county

is a whole "state" by itself: Los Angeles County (9.7M) — indivisible, and 44% over the target on its own

11 states'

worth of land (the Mountain West + Great Plains) collapses into just a handful of regions

The real 50 states range from 0.6 million people (Wyoming) to 39 million (California) — a 67-fold difference in how much your state-level representation "weighs." Drawn with equal population instead, New York City needs to be carved into multiple regions, while a single region swallows most of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Dakotas.

Honest limits of this map: regions are built from whole counties, which sets a floor on equality — Los Angeles County alone exceeds the 6.7M target by 44% and can't be split, and the Brooklyn–Queens–Long Island region runs +15% for the same reason. Hawaii (bridged to the San Diego region) and Alaska (bridged to the Pacific Northwest) can't be land-contiguous with anything, so they join their nearest coastal neighbors.

Same country, same people — just lines drawn by population instead of history.

Populations: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2023 county estimates (Connecticut: 2020 census counties). Boundaries: U.S. Census via us-atlas. Method: recursive geographic bisection of 3,142 counties into contiguous regions, refined by border-county swaps. City labels: the 10 largest cities by city-proper population.