The Rudest States in America, Ranked. Here’s Where Florida Falls
Rudeness isn’t a Northern thing, no matter what your cousin in Boston says.
A survey of 1,000 Americans ranked every state by how rude its residents seem.
Florida cracked the top five.
Sunshine and manners, it turns out, don’t always travel together.
These are the rudest states in America, ranked, and the spot Florida claimed.
How the Ranking Works
This ranking comes from a study by Clever Real Estate, which surveyed 1,000 American adults in June 2024 about where they live and how they see the rest of the country.
Respondents answered 25 questions, and one of them asked which states have the rudest residents.
The rank is perception, not a manners test.
So this measures how Americans feel about each state, snap judgments and old grudges included.
Clever also folded in U.S. Census migration data to track where Americans keep moving.
10. Alabama
Alabama is the surprise on this list because the state trades on sweet tea and yes-ma’am hospitality.
Americans still ranked it the 10th-rudest state in the country.
Go figure.
The reputation for Southern charm didn’t keep it off the bottom rung of the top ten, and that stung a few folks around Birmingham and Mobile.
Cross the state line expecting all that Southern charm, and the survey says many visitors still don’t feel it.
9. Connecticut
Connecticut sits close enough to New York City that the commuters carry some of the same attitude up I-95.
The survey put it 9th.
Blame the commute.
Commuters spend their mornings sprinting for Metro-North trains into Manhattan and their evenings sprinting back to Stamford and New Haven.
Patience runs thin when your whole day is built around a timetable.
Fairfield County’s commuters pour toward Manhattan every weekday morning and trickle home every night.
8. Massachusetts
Massachusetts landed at 8th, and anyone who has merged onto a Boston rotary might already know why.
Drivers there have a reputation that follows them onto every highway in New England.
They call it direct.
The rest of the country tends to call it something a little sharper, usually while checking the rearview mirror on the Mass Pike.
7. Illinois
Illinois came in 7th, and Chicago does most of the heavy lifting for the whole state.
In the same survey, Chicago ranked the third-rudest city in America, behind only New York and Washington.
Twenty-three percent of Americans said so, according to Clever’s numbers.
That’s not nothing.
A fast city with brutal winters tends to make fast, cold first impressions on anybody stepping off the train at Union Station.
6. Washington
Washington cracked the top six, and the reason even has a name.
Locals call it the Seattle Freeze, the polite-but-distant way the region treats anyone trying to make a new friend.
Nobody yells.
They just never quite invite you in, and transplants say they feel that chill for years after unpacking the moving truck.
The coffee lines stay polite and orderly, yet that friendliness rarely turns into a dinner invitation.
5. Florida
This is where Florida falls: The 5th-rudest state in the country, per the survey.
That puts the Sunshine State ahead of 45 others in how rude the country rates it.
So much for paradise.
Here’s the twist, though: Not one Florida city made the survey’s list of the rudest cities.
Miami, Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville all stayed off it.
So the folks Americans think are rude may be snowbirds and spring-breakers clogging I-95, not the people raised on the Gulf Coast.
Florida receives millions of new arrivals every year, and one cranky transplant still counts as a Floridian on a survey like this.
Retirees from the Northeast, remote workers chasing sunshine, and spring-breakers from everywhere funnel into the same beaches and the same left-turn lanes.
4. Texas
Texas ranked the 4th-rudest state, which is almost funny.
The official state motto is Friendship.
Read that twice.
Everything is bigger in Texas, apparently including the gap between the welcome-mat brand and how the country rated its people.
Sit too long in the left lane on I-35, and you’ll find out how quickly that friendly reputation disappears.
3. California
California took the bronze for rudeness at 3rd.
Los Angeles carried a chunk of that, landing as the fourth-rudest city with 21% of Americans pointing straight at it in Clever’s survey.
The 405 does it.
Two hours of freeway can cover eleven miles at rush hour, and nobody steps out of that traffic in a sunny mood.
Long commutes and steep rent test anybody’s patience, even under a perfect blue sky.
2. New Jersey
New Jersey landed at 2nd, and many residents would wear that like a varsity jacket.
Bluntness is a point of pride from the Turnpike to the Shore.
No apology coming.
Ask a stranger for directions at a Parkway rest stop, and you’ll get a real answer, whether or not you were ready for it.
Psst! Every state runs on its own unwritten rules about manners, and many people flunk the rules just one state over. Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
State Manners Pop Quiz
Answer these questions on American manners, slang, and regional quirks. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
In Pittsburgh, the local move where a left-turning driver darts ahead of oncoming traffic the instant the light turns green is called what?
1. New York
New York took the top spot as the rudest state in America.
Forty percent of Americans said New York has rude residents, the highest share of any state or city in the whole survey.
No other state came close.
New York City drives that number, where a fast walk and a faster no are simply how people get through the day on Seventh Avenue.
Ask a New Yorker if they're rude, and many will tell you they're just in a hurry.
They'll say it while already three steps past you, which might be the most New York answer you'll ever hear.
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