Something like what you're describing has already been done. It's an exhaustive, and comprehensive study of the levels of freedom in the 50 states, in a host of categories. It gives individual states' ratings in each of these categories, and an overall freedom rating.
It's called Freedom In The 50 States: An index of personal and economic freedom. It was authored by William Ruger and Jason Sorens of the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.
Hi Windflier -
Thanks for this. I really didn’t want to do all that work!
From the resource you provided, here are best and worst:
Most Freedom: TX, AZ, CO, ID, ND, SD, MO, TN, VA, NH
Least Freedom: CA, WA, IL, MA, NY, CT, RI, DC, MD, HA
Ten of each.
If you look at the presidential election results state by state, the results do not entirely equate with the freedom study.
Colorado, Virginia and New Hampshire were not keeping their love of freedom in mind when they voted.