CNBC ranking of ‘worst states to live’ draws conservative backlash

CNBC’s newly released “quality of life” rankings placed 10 Republican-led states at the bottom of its annual list of best places to live, drawing mockery from conservatives who contend the methodology penalizes red-state policy rather than reflecting where Americans are actually choosing to move.

The financial news outlet’s 2026 America’s Top States for Business study ranked the worst 10 states, from last to best of the bunch, as Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Georgia, Utah, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkansas, according to a full accounting of the rankings published by Nashville’s WSMV. Tennessee finished with a quality-of-life score of just 64 out of 290 points, while Texas came in at 78, according to a breakdown of the scoring reported by Newsweek. All 10 states are led by Republican governors and backed President Trump in 2024.

CNBC said quality of life now accounts for 11.6% of a state’s overall competitiveness score, up from about 10% last year, with the category built from crime rates, air quality, health care access, worker protections and what the outlet calls the inclusiveness of state laws — including anti-discrimination statutes and abortion access. In its report, CNBC said the bottom 10 states “do not make the grade.”

Tennessee was cited for its bathroom law requiring transgender residents to use facilities matching their sex at birth, a state ban on local anti-discrimination ordinances, and Gov. Bill Lee’s resolution designating June as “Nuclear Family Month.” Utah was marked down for its $7.25 minimum wage and limited childcare access, while Georgia was singled out for what CNBC called weak protections for LGBTQ+ residents.

The reaction split sharply along partisan lines. The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom seized on the pattern, posting on X that the states were “led by Republicans — many suffering from California Derangement Syndrome.” Rep. Lance Gooden, a Texas Republican, countered that the list ignored the state’s low taxes, school choice and immigration enforcement. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, dismissed the ranking as illogical, telling Newsweek that Tennessee’s population keeps growing even as CNBC brands it the worst place to live. Conservative commentators including Robby Starbuck and Patrick Bet-David made similar arguments on social media, contending that migration data offers a more accurate gauge of where Americans actually want to live than CNBC’s scoring criteria.

Those migration numbers are real, according to the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 population estimates. Texas gained a net 67,299 residents through domestic migration alone between mid-2024 and mid-2025, while Tennessee added 42,389 and Alabama picked up 23,358 — all among the largest domestic migration gains of any state in the country.

By contrast, two of the nation’s most left-wing major population centers kept shedding residents. Los Angeles County lost 53,421 people over the same period, the largest numeric decline of any county in the nation, according to Census data reported by Fox Business. New York City lost a net 114,000 residents to domestic outmigration, even as international arrivals kept its overall population loss to about 12,000, according to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis cited by Fox Business.

CNBC has said quality of life is just one of 10 categories used to rank states’ overall business climates, and several of the underlying measures, including abortion access and anti-discrimination law, remain politically contested nationwide.