DENVER — As Colorado prepares to celebrate the nation’s independence, personal finance website WalletHub is giving the Centennial State one more reason to celebrate.
The website listed Colorado among the top five most patriotic states in America.
The state didn’t gain the honor for setting off the most fireworks or selling the most hot dogs. Instead, Colorado gained notoriety based off of resident’s military and civic engagement.
WalletHub ranked military engagement based on the number of Coloradoan’s enlisted, how many veterans live in the state, along with the amount of active-duty and military reserve personnel living here.
Civic engagement was calculated by how many people voted in the 2016 presidential election, as well as voters in the 2016 primary elections.
Volunteer rate and volunteer hours per resident were also calculated, including AmeriCorps and Peace Corps volunteers. Participation in trials and grand juries was also ranked.
And for a little fun, WalletHub added the frequency of Google searches for American flags.
All 50 states were subject to the same criteria. Virginia landed in the No. 1 spot. Last was New Jersey.
[protected-iframe id=”910888299790886edf4868021aae2764-29290497-107107739″ info=”//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/13680/patriotic-geochart.html” width=”556″ height=”347″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”]
Colorado came in third place among states with the highest percent of adults who voted in the 2016 presidential election.