Nevada: Still (fairly) independent after all these years

Nevada, you’re still a fairly independent lot.

So says a survey of the states from WalletHub.com, which set out to rank the states based upon their dependency upon the federal government. It ranked factors such as the return on federal taxes, federal funding as a percentage of state revenue and the number of federal employees per capita.

And Nevada? We ranked No. 8 on the list of least-federally dependent states.

We’re outpaced only by Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut, Kansas and California in terms of independence from the feds. The most dependent states, according to the survey, are Mississippi and New Mexico (tied), Alabama, Louisiana, Maine and Montana.

An odd finding? Red states (those that tend to vote Republican) have a higher rate of dependency on the federal government than do blue states (those that tend to vote Democratic).