HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania may not be the most-romantic state in the nation, but new data suggests the Keystone State is at least in the Top Five.
That's according to a new survey released by Bookies.com, which charted the states that looked up "Valentine's Day" on Google or used the search engine to come up with Valentine's Day gift ideas the most over the last six years.
The survey determined West Virginia is the most romantic state in the nation, while New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York rounded out the top five.
Oregon checks in as the nation's least-romantic state, followed by Washington, Minnesota, Colorado and Wisconsin in the Bottom Five.
Methodology
For this project Bookies.com utilized Google Trends data going back over the previous six years (2017 through 2022).
For each year, the website broke down the raw search data for each state for the term: Valentine's Day, looking at data in the 30 days prior to Valentine's Day each year.
All states were assigned a numerical value from 1-100 depending on their search traffic data for each individual year (with the most searches getting a higher number and the least searches a lower number).
That data was then averaged over the six-year dataset and ranked from highest (most romantic) to lowest (least romantic).
The Findings
West Virginia was not only the highest ranked when averaging out the last six years of data, it ranked first overall in each year.
Despite having one of the smallest populations of any state in the U.S., the Mountaineers love themselves some Valentine’s Day, according to Bookies.com.
Love is in the air in the Mountain State, apparently.
The Top Ten
Much like college sports, there’s something to be said for finishing the season in the top 10.
The following states finished in the top 10 in each of the last six years surveyed by Bookies.com.
- 6 times (i.e. every time): West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware
- 5 times: Pennsylvania
- 4 times: Texas, Illinois
- 3 times: Arkansas, California, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina
- 2 times: Connecticut, Nebraska, Rhode Island
- 1 time: Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington D.C.
