White Privilege? Iowa Ranked Best State In The Union By U.S. News

Iowa may be better known for its corn, caucuses and creative writing programs, but the Hawkeye state also leads the nation in efforts to bring ultra-fast internet access to every city block and every rural acre.

Iowa's No. 1 rankings in the infrastructure category and the broadband access metric within that came as a "pleasant surprise" to David Daack, a broadband consultant for Connected Nation, which does business in the state as Connect Iowa. Previous data reports have shown Iowa more in the middle of the pack.

"When people think of Iowa, they usually think of agricultural places that won't necessarily need to be connected," Daack says. "But given the big data needs of agriculture today and in the future, those areas are going to need to be every bit as connected as the urban areas. … You could almost argue that maybe we should go (to the farms) first and work our way back into the cities."

Combine those No. 1s with Iowa's Top 10 rankings in health care (No. 3), opportunity (No. 4), education (No. 5) and quality of life (No. 9), and the state becomes "first in the nation" not only in terms of its presidential caucuses, but also when describing Iowa's overall placement in the U.S. News & World Report's Best States rankings.