Southern Living's South’s Best Awards Methodology: How We Conducted Our Survey

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Published on March 7, 2023

The South's Best — Photo:
Gabriela Herman

To determine winners of our 2023 South’s Best Awards, a survey developed by the editors of Southern Living in association with the research firm M&RR was posted online at southernliving.com/southsbestvote from August 10, 2022 to September 15, 2022. Readers were invited to participate through promotions in Southern Living magazine, email newsletters, social media platforms, and on southernliving.com. M&RR kept the survey website secure, collected the data, and monitored the responses for any fraudulent votes, which were eliminated.

The lists of nominations were compiled by Southern Living editors, and then respondents were asked to select their favorite barbecue joints, cities, hotels, local restaurants (no multi-state chain restaurants), small towns, and state parks. To tap into the regional expertise of the audience, respondents were only allowed to vote on places in their own state or in states they had visited. The one exception was the Cities category, which was open to all voters regardless of their location. Additional categories, such as wineries in Virginia and bourbon distilleries in Kentucky, were chosen to highlight a range of destinations that reflect each state’s unique attributes and culture. The following 14 states were chosen to participate: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.