In previous editions of Freedom in the Fifty States (2023, 2022, 2019, and 2016), New Hampshire and Florida have routinely been the two states with the greatest levels of economic and personal freedom.

For the 2026 version, however, the best state is Arizona, with Montana is second place. Florida (#4) and New Hampshire (#8) still do well, but they’ve been dethroned.

Hawaii is the least-free state, beating out New York and Massachusetts.

Since I’m an economist, I was especially interested in the rankings for economic freedom.

On this basis, New Hampshire is still #1, followed by Idaho and Texas.

Hawaii was last (again), followed by Minnesota and California.

And since my economic specialty is public finance, the next map to catch my eye was the fiscal burden.

New Hampshire was the best state on this basis, followed by Florida and South Dakota. Hawaii (again) was at the bottom, followed by New York and New Mexico.

There are lots of additional maps, but I’ll close with one that gives me hope for the future.

I’ve previously written about the encouraging spread of school choice. Our final map shows the best and worst states. So, congratulations to Arizona, Florida, and Iowa.

And total disdain for Rhode Island, Maine, and Virginia.

The obvious takeaway from all this data is that some states offer more liberty for residents. So we should not be surprised that they grow faster (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

In an ideal world, we would dismantle most of the federal government in Washington so that the good states would have more leeway to become hotbeds of freedom. That’s one of the best reasons to support federalism.