The population in the U.S. is not spread out evenly across the country; it is heavily concentrated within just a few areas. This obviously has several big implications for political issues. Here are a few maps to help you visualize this. More than half of the population lives in these counties, shaded in blue: More than half of the population lives in these 9 states: Another statistic, 40 percent of the country's population lives within 100 miles of the coast. That number would increase to more than half if you extended the range to 150 miles and also included the area along the shores of the Great Lakes.
An interesting pattern emerges, the population in the Western half of the country is a lot more concentrated into narrow areas, while more of the population in the Eastern half is spread out (even though there are still very densely populated areas). You can see from the pattern that Texas is about halfway between "East" and "West". (Also, don't let the map be misleading, there are a lot more people in those high density areas than the map can show, because there would just be lots of dots on top of each other that would not show a larger area of color, so it obscures the true extent of population concentration, this map isn't good at showing how many people actually live in each state)
These two areas on the map have the same population: There are a number of different possible ways to divide the country into parts with equal population: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...population_what_would_the_map_of_america.html
