"Coastal counties" is super misleading. About 82% of the US population lives in coastal states and that figure goes up a little bit every year.

Coastal states is a hell of a lot more misleading than "coastal counties"

The people of Bangor Maine and Buffalo NY have a hell of a lot more in common with the people of Cincinnati Ohio than they do with the people of Portland Maine and NYC.

On the west coast the "wealthy urban and suburban areas on the coast" vs "literally everywhere else" difference is even more stark. And I'm not talking about just the urban vs rural divide. The people of secondary cities resent being ruled by the interests of the major metropolitan areas as much as the rural folks do.

Ah, the snobby, coastal elite cities of El Paso, Amarillo, and Fairbanks :)

Cities/MSAs are the drivers of cultural identification in America, much less so than states.

What is a coastal state?

Nearly 100% of Michigan is 150 miles or less from an international border that is in navigable waters. Is it a coastal state?

No, because nobody talks about the “north coast.”

Yes, the great lakes are usually included as coasts (when not included, their exclusion is typically explicitly noted.)

Exactly. I got downvoted unfortunately, which means that at least someone thought it was a ridiculous question. It's not.

Navigable Waters of the United States has a specific legal definition [1] and it has nothing to do with whether it's salt water or fresh water. So the question of whether a particular state is "coastal" based on proximity to salt water a valid question!

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/33/2.36

Are you defining coastal county as a county with at least one border on the coast? That's pretty misleading, as someone could live a 1/2 hour from the beach and not be in a coastal county. But, I think most people including that person, would consider themselves to be living on the coast.

YUP! I live in Orlando FL, a city with no county boarders on the ocean. Orlando is 1 of 2 "inland" cities in the state (the other being Gainesville), but I drive 35m east and I'm at a beach on The Atlantic Ocean, or I can drive 90m west and be at a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. We are definitely a coastal city even if we aren't a coastal city :)

> Only about 40% of the population lives in a coastal county

Counties have a variety of shapes and sizes, so that doesn't really tell you proximity to the coast, but a majority of the population lives within 50 miles of the coasts.