For those with an interest in the regional model set forth in American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, here are population figures for the U.S. portions of each of the nations as per the 2020 census and the rate of growth or loss for each since the 2010 census. [UPDATE 8/25/23: We applied a range of small corrections to this data set after discovering a handful of small coding errors, most relating to small county units that split or were renamed resulting in FIPS code changes.]
From most populous to least populous:
| Regional Culture | 2020 Population | Growth since 2010 | |
| Greater Appalachia | 61,533,060 | 7.9% | |
| Yankeedom | 55,039,256 | 2.8% | |
| Deep South | 45,601,310 | 9.3% | |
| Midlands | 38,376,052 | 3.45% | |
| El Norte | 34,345,223 | 6.2% | |
| Far West | 30,514,172 | 10.3% | |
| Left Coast | 20,899,097 | 6.0% | |
| New Netherland | 18,804,245 | 9.8% | |
| Tidewater | 13,199,554 | 9.0% | |
| Spanish Caribbean | 8,222,786 | 10.6% | |
| New France | 2,866,860 | 3.9% | |
| Greater Polynesia | 1,455,271 | 6.5% | |
| First Nation | 67,580 | 6.8% | |
(Thanks to Tova Perlman and her colleagues at the cultural geospatial consultancy Motivf for the calculations.)
More demographic and economic information to come, but observe that Yankeedom has the slowest growth of all the U.S. portions of these regional cultures (probably true of Canadian Yankeedom as well, I’d speculate) while the Far West is the fastest growing of the major U.S. cultures and the Spanish Caribbean’s South Florida enclave the fastest of all.
Motivf and I last posted American Nations data on vaccination rates by nation. Working with other partners I’ve also posted data on rural vs urban voting patterns and the 2016 presidential and 2020 presidential elections.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.