Americans are bad at geography. So bad that some think Canada is Iran, study finds

A recent poll found only 28% of registered voters could pick out Iran on a map.

The poll from Morning Consult and Politico took place Jan. 4-5, shortly after the U.S. killed one of Iran’s top military leaders, and involved nearly 2,000 registered voters.

Most voters got the general area correct, but some picked places as far out as Australia and even the United States itself.

Americans have long struggled with geography. A 2017 poll by Morning Consult and The New York Times found only 36% of adults could find North Korea on a map. Another study at the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2014 found only 16% of the 2,066 Americans surveyed could identify Ukraine on a map.

This failure at geography goes back decades. A survey from 2006 found 63% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East, despite the U.S. being in the middle of the Iraq war.

In 1988, the New York Times reported that a poll commissioned by the National Geographic Society found American adults ranked sixth in a nine-country survey of geographic literacy. Sweden tested the best, followed by Germany.

Gilbert Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society at the time, was quoted by the Times as saying the lost generation “haven’t the faintest idea where they are.”