New York placed third in a commercial ranking of America’s “luckiest” states, with historical lottery winnings and unusually high interest in luck-related Google searches helping drive its score.
Zenith, a casino technology provider, compared all 50 states and gave New York 85.06 points out of 100. Released ahead of Friday, Nov. 13, the analysis combines lottery and game show results with measures such as sunshine, casino counts and search activity; it does not measure an individual resident’s chances of winning.
New York leads the study’s jackpot count
The study counted 56 New York Mega Millions and Powerball jackpot winners since the two games began, more than in any other state in its analysis. The average prize among those winners was about $115.3 million.
It also identified nine New York residents who won at least $500,000 on major game shows. The shows covered were “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “Wheel of Fortune” through its Million Dollar Wedge and “Jeopardy!” New York’s rate of 0.45 qualifying winners per million residents ranked sixth.
Search activity was another strong component. Zenith counted 5,775,090 luck-related searches in New York over the previous year, or 28,870 per 100,000 residents, the highest rate in the study. Those figures represent searches, rather than a count of distinct people.
The analysis listed 34 casinos in New York and average annual sunshine of 2,677 hours, slightly above the national average of 2,622 hours.
Massachusetts and Illinois finish ahead of New York
Massachusetts led the ranking with 92.94 points, followed by Illinois at 88.73. Massachusetts had 11 recorded jackpot winners with an average prize of about $465.2 million, while Illinois had 20 winners averaging about $271.8 million.
New Hampshire ranked fourth with 83.63 points and Maryland fifth with 79.05. Completing the top 10 were California, 78.57; New Jersey, 74.37; Virginia, 62.60; Washington, 60.50; and South Carolina, 60.20.
California had 52 jackpot winners in the study, four fewer than New York, but a higher average prize of about $242.3 million. Its sixth-place overall finish illustrates how the other measures and their assigned weights affect the final ranking.
How Zenith calculated its luck scores
Lottery measures accounted for half of the available points: 10 for jackpot winner counts, 15 each for total prize money and average winnings per winner, and 10 for prize money relative to a state’s population. Zenith said it obtained the lottery figures from the official Mega Millions and Powerball websites.
Qualifying game show winners accounted for another 20 points. Luck-related search activity was worth 20 points, while sunshine and casino counts were worth five points each.
The search analysis used Google’s Keyword Ads Planner and 50 terms, including “four leaf clover,” “dreamcatcher” and “lucky coin,” adjusted for population. Sunshine figures came from US Climate Data and casino counts from the American Gaming Association, according to the methodology.
The release provided the top 10 states and its scoring weights, but did not specify an exact cutoff date for the historical winnings or the dates covered by the search data. Its mix of past results, search interest and environmental measures makes the result a custom comparison, rather than evidence that buying a lottery ticket in New York offers better odds.
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