Friday, June 17th 2016, 1:22 pm
Is Oklahoma City the “Most Normal” city in the country?
That's according to the Kentucky Economist Lyman Stone who asked the question Where is Real America? He used 20 different measurements in his search for the most normal city, ranging from the usual like poverty rate and education to the lesser looked at number of immigrant or rooms per home.
Over Twitter, Stone explained his study as "your most accurate possible "slice of America”. When asked if OKC is just the least weird he said, "take your pick; it's about if you want one city."
For some, being the least weird may sound boring, but to the city's chamber of commerce it's just fine.
“I think we're special but I think we look like the rest of the people in our country and I think that's great,” Kurt Forman said. Foreman is the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice-president for Economic Development.
“If being one of the most vibrant economies over the last ten years, being a place that's really made itself a special place, a place where people really want to be a part of, if that's normal than absolutely we want to be that,” he said.
Finding the elusive "real America" has also been a common theme in this year's contentious presidential race where being out of touch is a political death sentence. Former candidates like Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio often talked about Washington D.C. elites not understanding average Americans.
But Stone said don't be too quick to pick OKC as politically normal, Oklahoma City's oddities skew away from the political norms and may not make OKC the best predictor of who will be commander in chief.
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