standout states

• Utah and Idaho top the rankings at 1st and 2nd place, respectively. They also happen to be two of the least densely populated states in the U.S.
• New York has absolutely no time for dad jokes. Maybe they’re too busy walkin’ here to appreciate the finer points of a good pun. They rank dead last.

Regional differences

• The East/West divide is real. Four out of the top five states that love dad jokes are west of the Mississippi River, while four of the bottom five states are east of it.
• Swamps have a dampening effect (we’re sorry) on dad jokes: Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi are all in the bottom five.

in praise of the humble dad joke

Ah, the humble dad joke. Designed specifically to cheer up sullen 5-year-olds, the best dad jokes (or worst dad jokes, depending on how you look at it) are equal parts cheesy pun, intentionally exasperating misunderstanding, and heartfelt desire to make you feel a little better.

Luckily, being a dad comes with built-in advantages, and one of them is the approximately 10-year window of time when your kids believe you to be a comedic genius. But once those kids get older, man, watch out, because you’re in eyeroll country.

And while it seems harmless to let dads heave their precious cornballs, some people would rather dads pass the mic. Some people, though, downright love the it—the funny, the bad, and the corny! We wanted to see if there was any kind of a geographic divide when it comes to folks who guffaw and folks who say “naw” to dad jokes, so we turned to Google.

Thankfully there are dads and dad-adjacent people in every state searching for dad jokes, and all that data is public.

dad joke interest by state

We looked at Google search interest by state over the past five years for three specific dad joke-related queries: dad jokes, stupid jokes, and puns. We ranked each query by state, then finally combined all three rankings to come up with a definitive list of which states love dad jokes the most—and which don’t.

The backslapping spirit of the American frontier is alive and well: four of the top five dad-jokin’ states are out west. The mountain dads of the West play to an especially forgiving audience—Utah and Idaho lead the pack—while the plains dads of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Indiana round out the top 5.

On the other side, thumbing your nose at cheap laughs is an eastern thing: four of the bottom five states are east of the Mississippi River. At the very bottom is New York, arguably the most cosmopolitan place in the world, and home to They Who Suffer Not Banalities. Then come Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, all home to extensive swampland, and no one jokes with swamp dads.

Check out the full rankings here:

For the full data, or questions or comments about the data, email at sschulfer@groupon.com