answers: California
context: location of the Northwestern and Southwestern United States. In the early years of the United States, newly colonized lands lying immediately west of the Allegheny Mountains were detached from Virginia and given the name Northwest Territory. During the decades that followed, the Northwest Territory covered much of the Great Lakes region east of the Mississippi River. As of 2016, the Northwestern states have a cumulative population of 14,297,316, with Oregon and Washington accounting for 77% of the entire five-state region's population. As of 2016, there are 25 metropolitan statistical areas in the Northwest with populations of 100,000 or more, none </s> only country that is larger in total area than the contiguous United States, but smaller than the entire United States, while Russia, Canada and China are the only three countries larger than both. The 2010 census population of this area was 306,675,006, comprising 99.33% of the nation's population, and a density of 103.639 inhabitants/sq mi (40.015/km), compared to 87.264/sq mi (33.692/km) for the nation as a whole. While "conterminous U.S." has the precise meaning of "contiguous U.S." (both adjectives meaning "sharing a common boundary"), other terms commonly used to describe the 48 contiguous states have a greater degree of ambiguity. </s> states, as many Northeastern states are not large enough in area to warrant a large number of counties, and many Western states were sparsely populated when counties were created. The five counties of Rhode Island, the eight counties of Connecticut, and eight of the 14 counties of Massachusetts no longer have functional county governments, but continue to exist as legal and census entities. The average U.S. county population was nearly 100,000 in 2015. The most populous county is Los Angeles County, California, with 10,170,292 residents in 2015. This number is greater than the populations of 41 U.S. states, and even
question: which state in the united states has the largest population