The 10 Dumbest Places In Arizona For 2023


The dumbest places in Arizona are San Luis and Guadalupe for 2023 based on Saturday Night Science.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that some places in the Grand Canyon State have a larger percent of their population that never graduated from high school.

While the emphasis on going to college might be overblown, the fact is that not graduating from high school puts you at a significant disadvantage on average. Educational attainment might not be the best way to measure one person’s intelligence, but it does shine a light on the state.

We will use Saturday Night Science to determine what places in Arizona have the highest percentage of adults without a high school degree.

A recent study we published found that Arizona is actually the 37th smartest state in the United States, with an average IQ of 98.

But that doesn’t mean that a few cities in Arizona are a bit slower than others due to a lack of basic education.

After crunching the numbers, we ranked the ten dumbest cities in the Grand Canyon State.

Don’t freak out.

Some places are just smarter than others, but that says nothing about the character of the people living there. It’s another data point a real estate agent would never tell you.

For this ranking, we only looked at cities with populations greater than 5,000, leaving us 52 cities in Arizona to rank. You can take a look at the data below.

For more Arizona reading, check out:


Table Of Contents: Top Ten | Methodology | Summary | Table


The 10 Dumbest Places In Arizona For 2023

San Luis, AZ

Source: Flickr User digitalbookmobile | CC BY 2.0
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 35,289
% Adult High School Dropout: 49.0%
% Highly Educated: 7.0%
More on San Luis:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Guadalupe, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Logan Antill/Original uploader was Tillman at en.wikipedia | CC BY 2.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 5,334
% Adult High School Dropout: 34.0%
% Highly Educated: 9.0%
More on Guadalupe:  Cost Of Living

Tolleson, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Angelica Phoenix from Phoenix, Arizona, USA | CC BY 2.0
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 7,180
% Adult High School Dropout: 32.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Tolleson:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Eloy, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Marine 69-71 | CC BY-SA 4.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 15,171
% Adult High School Dropout: 28.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Eloy:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Winslow, AZ

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

3
/10
Population: 8,961
% Adult High School Dropout: 18.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Winslow:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Somerton, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User RicardoCr5 | CC BY-SA 4.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 14,126
% Adult High School Dropout: 33.0%
% Highly Educated: 16.0%
More on Somerton:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Florence, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Tony the Marine (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 25,356
% Adult High School Dropout: 26.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Florence:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Douglas, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Jeff Henley | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 16,470
% Adult High School Dropout: 25.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Douglas:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Nogales, AZ

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

3
/10
Population: 19,829
% Adult High School Dropout: 33.0%
% Highly Educated: 17.0%
More on Nogales:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

El Mirage, AZ

Source: Wikipedia User Tony the Marine (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

6
/10
Population: 35,410
% Adult High School Dropout: 20.0%
% Highly Educated: 16.0%
More on El Mirage:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Methodology: How we determined the dumbest cities in the Grand Canyon State

We realize that formal education is only part of it when it comes to being intelligent, but on the other hand, knowing the difference between they’re, their, and there is always going to make you look pretty stupid.

So, we narrowed down our criteria to focus on a city’s educational opportunities and what percentage of the population takes advantage of those opportunities.

In short, we came up with these criteria to determine the dumbest cities in Arizona:

  • % of the city’s population with less than a high school education (Age 25+)
  • % of city’s population with a college degree (Age 25+)

We got the data from the U.S. Census 2017-2021 American Community Survey.

Then, our algorithm generates a rank for each place in these categories. After crunching all the numbers, a ranking of the cities in Arizona from dumbest to brightest.

For this ranking, we used every Arizona city with at least 5,000 residents. We updated this article for 2023, and it’s our tenth time ranking the dumbest cities in Arizona.

There You Have It – Now That You’re Asleep

If you’re measuring the locations in Arizona where there are a high number of dropouts and adults who never received a formal education, this is an accurate ranking.

If you’re also curious enough, here are the smartest places in Arizona, according to science:

  1. Oro Valley
  2. Paradise Valley
  3. Scottsdale

For more Arizona reading, check out:

Detailed List Of The Dumbest Cities In Arizona For 2023

Rank City Population
1 San Luis, AZ 35,289
2 Guadalupe, AZ 5,334
3 Tolleson, AZ 7,180
4 Eloy, AZ 15,171
5 Winslow, AZ 8,961
6 Somerton, AZ 14,126
7 Florence, AZ 25,356
8 Douglas, AZ 16,470
9 Nogales, AZ 19,829
10 El Mirage, AZ 35,410
11 Coolidge, AZ 13,347
12 Safford, AZ 9,981
13 Apache Junction, AZ 38,311
14 Camp Verde, AZ 11,942
15 Yuma, AZ 95,154
16 Avondale, AZ 88,065
17 Casa Grande, AZ 53,488
18 Glendale, AZ 245,685
19 Page, AZ 7,466
20 Thatcher, AZ 5,172
21 Chino Valley, AZ 12,854
22 Phoenix, AZ 1,591,119
23 Globe, AZ 7,185
24 Kingman, AZ 32,204
25 Benson, AZ 5,252
26 Snowflake, AZ 6,086
27 Tucson, AZ 538,167
28 Prescott Valley, AZ 46,014
29 Mesa, AZ 497,752
30 Cottonwood, AZ 12,073
31 Maricopa, AZ 57,075
32 Payson, AZ 16,229
33 Surprise, AZ 141,875
34 Show Low, AZ 11,623
35 Goodyear, AZ 93,651
36 Sierra Vista, AZ 44,944
37 Wickenburg, AZ 7,359
38 Tempe, AZ 178,862
39 Peoria, AZ 187,733
40 Sedona, AZ 9,723
41 Marana, AZ 50,834
42 Sahuarita, AZ 33,524
43 Chandler, AZ 272,439
44 Prescott, AZ 45,063
45 Queen Creek, AZ 57,728
46 Gilbert, AZ 262,249
47 Litchfield Park, AZ 6,656
48 Flagstaff, AZ 76,228
49 Fountain Hills, AZ 23,639
50 Scottsdale, AZ 238,685
51 Paradise Valley, AZ 12,666
52 Oro Valley, AZ 46,515
About Nick Johnson

Nick Johnson earned his masters in Business Administration from the Drucker School At Claremont Graduate University. He has written for 39 publications across the country and ran the media relations department at Movoto, a real estate portal based in San Francisco. He has been featured in over 500 publications as an expert in real estate and as an authority on real estate trends.

Nick's the creator of the HomeSnacks YouTube channel that now has over 260,000 subscribers and is an excellent source to learn about different parts of the country.

10 thoughts on “The 10 Dumbest Places In Arizona For 2023

  1. I didn’t see my beloved Casa Grande. Obviously, we must hopefully rank as one of the smarter cities. Where do we rank overall?

  2. Your misuse of statistics to rate communities as dumb or dumber is both reprehensible and dishonest. For example if all of the residents of every community had diploma rates of 91 to 92% and dropout rates of 0% to .1% you would still give the cities a judgemental rating of dumb to dumbest based on the cold hard math when in fact they could conceivably be the smartest places anywhere to live.
    Also some of those towns are pretty small and “might” have a senior class average size of 5 for the last century. Then one year a student dropped out because he contacted the dengue plague and was unable to continue. The next year he came back to school and graduated 1st in his class. Yet, due to the small sample size, on the year he dropped out the dropout rate went to 20%. One outlier and your judgemental rating as dumb to some power of x suddenly increases more than exponentially. Worse, it will take several centuries of perfect dropout rates to reduce the average rate to a really low rate again that will still be much larger than the previous rate. How much bigger is .01% than 0%. It is incalculably larger. You should not be publishing any results of you deductions because you are not smart enough to detect outliers and other phenomena that must be accounted for. Now I admit that I’m being a bit harsh in saying so since the above analysis was in fact a fictional example created to illustrate the weakness of your judgements by not identifying and disclosing data outliers and other factors that would “color” your judgements. Back to statistics 101 with you.
    Also, your initial premises is shaky by asserting an unsupported opinion that the only way to measure the value of a place is by measuring the intellectual accomplishments of its denizens. But it takes more than academic achievement nto build a society. It takes brick makers and layers, stone masons, pottery makers,farmers and fig prickers to name a few.You get the idea. Without these trades we’d each have to do these things for ourselves. Whether a singer of songs or a maker of thongs we all work together to build our societies and each persons contribution is important because without it we’d each have to do whatever it is for ourselves or do without..

  3. Man if Flagstaff ain’t the dumbest city in Arizona, I would hate to see the others. When I say dumb, I dont mean by school education

  4. This only proves what people had in past, but not what achieved. My father, for instance, didn’t have a highschool education. However, he owned a motel, a hotel, and 3 gas stations. Obviously, all his 4 kids went to college and with brand new cars for all us kids!! Plus, we’re all successful too because of his drive, not his education.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *