Casting geography
Which States Produce the Most Survivor Contestants and Winners?
California leads the database with 198 unique contestants and 8 winning appearances. US Survivor data through Season 50.
The deeper read
Casting geography is more concentrated than the long state list suggests
The database contains 55 normalized residence labels, but the top five account for 50.6% of the contestant totals shown. California alone contributes 198 unique castaways.
This is not a map of where Survivor fandom lives. It is a map of the residence CBS attached to contestants when they played, shaped by applicant pools, recruiting, production access, and the entertainment industry’s own geography.
At a glance
A national cast with a concentrated core
After normalizing known spelling and D.C. aliases.
Share of the state-level contestant totals.
8 winning appearances.
Breadth and balance are not the same: many places appear, but a few places supply a disproportionate share of the cast.
A returnee winner is attached to the residence listed for that winning season.
What the numbers say
Key findings
- The top five listed residences account for 50.6% of the state totals shown.
- Appearances and unique contestants differ because returnees are counted once in the contestant column but once per season in appearances.
- The field can include non-state locations, so the table preserves the source label instead of pretending every row is a US state.
Full results
The underlying table
| Listed state or region | Unique contestants | Appearances | Winning appearances |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 198 | 236 | 8 |
| New York | 74 | 85 | 4 |
| Florida | 48 | 57 | 2 |
| Texas | 48 | 54 | 2 |
| Massachusetts | 31 | 36 | 2 |
| Illinois | 26 | 27 | 0 |
| Pennsylvania | 25 | 30 | 3 |
| New Jersey | 21 | 26 | 4 |
| North Carolina | 21 | 23 | 2 |
| Tennessee | 18 | 20 | 1 |
| South Carolina | 16 | 16 | 1 |
| Georgia | 15 | 17 | 1 |
| Utah | 14 | 18 | 2 |
| Virginia | 14 | 16 | 0 |
| Washington | 14 | 16 | 1 |
| Colorado | 13 | 14 | 0 |
| Louisiana | 13 | 16 | 0 |
| Washington, D.C. | 11 | 14 | 1 |
| Arizona | 10 | 11 | 0 |
| Missouri | 10 | 11 | 0 |
| Ohio | 10 | 10 | 1 |
| Maryland | 9 | 10 | 0 |
| Michigan | 9 | 10 | 1 |
| Nevada | 9 | 9 | 0 |
| Alabama | 8 | 12 | 1 |
| Kentucky | 8 | 10 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Rhode Island | 7 | 9 | 1 |
| Connecticut | 6 | 9 | 0 |
| New Hampshire | 6 | 6 | 1 |
| Oregon | 6 | 9 | 0 |
| Wisconsin | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| Indiana | 5 | 8 | 0 |
| Maine | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| Ontario | 5 | 5 | 2 |
| Arkansas | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| Hawaii | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Idaho | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| Iowa | 4 | 7 | 2 |
| Kansas | 4 | 5 | 1 |
| Oklahoma | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Delaware | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Mississippi | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Nebraska | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Alberta | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| British Columbia | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Guanajuato | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Manitoba | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Montana | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Puerto Rico | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Quebec | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Saskatchewan | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| South Dakota | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Vermont | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Wyoming | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Reproduce the result
Methodology and limitations
What we counted
We grouped appearance records by their listed state or region, counting both unique castaway IDs and total appearances. A winning appearance is assigned to the residence listed for that season.
Read this with care
This measures where a contestant was presented as living when cast—not birthplace, upbringing, or current residence. Missing residence values are excluded.
The generated CSV contains every row in the underlying table. See About the data for source provenance, update cadence, and corrections.