Washington:
Walla Walla, Grays Harbor, Cowlitz, and Chelan were the ones I had the most trouble categorizing.
That map really doesn't feel right to me... Island, Walla Walla, Lewis, Kitsap, maybe Chelan... Whitman's territory is very rural but it's population is very mini-metro (68% in Pullman). I just don't think I really buy this metric we're using, and I don't know if the county level is the proper level of aggregation to be looking at this anyway.
Yeah this was kinda made to show how a formula that works for most of the country doesn't 100% work with Washington. Because other states have small, uniformly sized counties and Washington's counties were very much drawn with the attitude of "Well, we have to put this mountain range SOMEWHERE"
Specifically, we could use a category for counties that occupy a large area but have most of the population packed into a small city. Chelan, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, and Walla Walla fall into this category, and I don't feel comfortable calling any of those mini metros.
Whitman county has just under 50K people, so I felt rural was appropriate.
Island I think falls into rural but I'm willing to hear an argument. Most of the county lives in unincorporated area, and from my experience the county feels very similar to Clallam or Jefferson.
