Indiana Residents Share What Makes Them Proud To Be a Hoosier

We asked readers of Fishers Digest if they’re proud to be a Hoosier. Here’s what they thought.

An infographic and word cloud showing people proud to be Hoosiers and their thoughts

Fishers Digest in partnership with SMARI, a Fishers market research firm, did a poll asking thousands of Fishers readers if they are proud to call themselves Hoosiers. The results show 65% are proud to be Hoosiers, while 17% said they are not proud and 18% felt indifferent. So turns out, most of you are!… with some caveats.

If you’ve never seen a wordcloud before, here’s how it works: The larger a word is, the more often it was mentioned in our poll last Friday. It’s a nuanced view of what drives both pride and dissatisfaction among Indiana residents.

Why we chose this question

Indiana ranks 40th/50 for happiness in the US, according to WalletHub. In general, people who live here have a lower perception of Indiana vs how people from other states view us. But happiness does not necessarily measure pride, so we wanted to ask that specific question knowing all of the above.

Source: WalletHub

Key Takeaways

  • We are proud of our neighbors, having four seasons, family bonds, cost of living, hospitality, sports, and many more (see the list below) 💪
  • Feelings on politics and culture clash, and are hard to put as positive or negative. There is everything from all love, positive, negative, and even hatred 
  • We aren’t fans of our infrastructure or traffic 😂

Themes/words ranked from most to least mentioned

The following list shows the

  • GRAY/BLACK = Positive. People love this about being a Hoosier!
  • BLUE = This was a polarizing response, responses were all over the place from love to really dislike.
  • RED = Most felt negatively about it

One last thing. Let’s take culture for example. We grouped culture as a variety of things. For example, some people mentioned they love that we are midwest nice. While some mentioned they hate our culture of book banning. Because these both fell under the culture category, we tagged it as polarizing. These are just two examples of many we received.

  1. Politics
  2. Culture
  3. Friendly
  4. Four seasons
  5. Family
  6. Cost-of-living
  7. Entertainment
  8. Convenient travel
  9. Education
  10. Hoosier Hospitality
  11. Sports
  12. Conservative
  13. Greenspace
  14. Healthcare
  15. Proud
  16. Small-town
  17. Birthplace
  18. Hard-working
  1. Infrastructure
  2. Natural beauty
  3. Safe
  4. State parks
  5. Architecture
  6. Art
  7. City life
  8. Easy going
  9. Economy
  10. Farms
  11. Food
  12. History
  13. Honest
  14. Housing
  15. Outdoor activities
  16. Roads
  17. Rural life
  18. Traffic

Closing thoughts

This was a ton of fun to work together on with SMARI. And we have more planned. But it would not have been possible without everyone who reads and participates in the Fishers Digest newsletter — so THANK YOU! You’re the really heroes here.

If you liked this and want to see more of this, consider subscribing if you aren’t. And if you are subscribed, share it with a friend! Make sure to grab your unique code found in every email we send.

Similar Posts