I found the original article counter-intuitive. Maybe I have my own confirmation bias to satisfy. We should always be cautious.

I went to your link. The first red flag was the amount of advertising on the website: almost begging me to stop reading and click a link. Maybe the research was good, maybe not. When profit is the motive, we should be suspicious.

It would interesting to see why Green Bay is doing so well. Maybe there's a worthy topic to write a Medium article.

At this point, neither of your analyses is convincing. I shall hold on to my confirmation bias for the time being, which is "life is generally better in blue states than red states."