Most states in both the EU and the US do not bother with think tanks so much so, that the entity with the most think tanks by far, is not even a state. Outside of Washington DC, only the United Kingdom has more than 200 think tanks.

Findings

The UK, Germany, and France have the most think tanks in both the EU and the US, excluding the District of Columbia.

Massachusetts, California, New York, and Virginia are the leading US states and the only ones to have over 100 think tanks.

Wyoming is the only state in both the EU and the US to not have a single think tank.

The overwhelming majority of states have less than 50 think tanks.

Amongst the top ten, both the EU and US have five states each.

Caveats

The data is from 2016.

Details

Over one out of every ten think tanks in the EU and the US are located in Washington DC. One out of every five are either in DC or the United Kingdom, and just over half are located in nine states (out of 79 total states: the 50 US states and the District of Columbia and the 28 EU states): DC, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Massachusetts, California, New York, Virginia, and Italy.

In total, the EU has 1,493 or 44.88 percent of the total think tanks in the EU and US, and the US has 1,834 or 55.12 percent of the total think tanks in the EU and US.

Sources

McGann, James G. 2017. "2016 Global Go to Think Tank Index Report." University of Pennsylvania. http://repository.upenn.edu/think_tanks/12/?utm_source=repository.upenn.edu%2Fthink_tanks%2F12&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.