When you take error margins, it gets even more telling. Alabama has the highest margin of error (and by a decent margin, +/- 1.9%, next would be KY/AZ at 1.4). It's error range overlaps with the majority of the error ranges of other states. The only state it doesn't overlap with, where Alabama is the lower range, is California (DC, too, but that's not a state.).

Birmingham seems a bit odd. UK's is definitely bigger, but Alabama's would have a larger sway than just the neighbors.

Random calculations:

States/District with the most number places on the list: 19-California, 15-New York, 10-Massachusetts, 9-Pennsylvannia, 7-New Jersey, Illinois, 6-Texas, 5-DC, North Carolina, Florida. Three states have four, eight have three, and nine have two (Unless St. Thomas is referring to Texas, in which case Texas has seven and Minnesota only has one.). Nevada, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming have none.

Most per capita: 1 DC (5 with pop 671,803), 2 VT (1 with 647,064), 3 NH (2 with 1,395,231), 4 MA (10 with 6,981,974), 5 DE (1 with 1,018,396), 6 IA (3 with 3,200,517), 7 RI (1 with 1,093,734), 8 CT (3 with 3,626,205), 9 AL (4 with 5,074,296), 10 NY (15 with 19,677,151). After 11 NJ (7 with 9,261,699) and 12 PA (9 with 12,972,008) the ratio starts to drop off.

Granted, the universities aren't all of the same competitiveness. All of Alabama's (Auburn, Samford, Alabama, UAB) are in that 23-27% range. New Jersey has Princeton (82%), Rutgers (24%) and everything else sub 20%.

They don't actually have that similar of geography. Mississippi lies completely in the Atlantic Coastal Plain (the area known for plantations across the South), while only a little over half of Alabama is. The end of the Appalachians occurs in Alabama, just south of Birmingham.

Since it's the end, a lot of the subdivisions of the Appalachians, like the Ridge & Valley, uniquely hit the coastal plain only in Alabama. This creates some rare soil mixes at those points.

On top of that, Alabama's rivers quickly spread out like a fan. So there are many different rivers that cross the fall line (the meeting of the coastal plain with the Appalachians), like the Tennessee River, the Black Warrior River, the Cahaba River, the Coosa River and the Tallapoosa. The fall line tends to isolate aquatic ecosystems above the line, so Alabama ends up with five or six uniquely isolated ecosystems in the northern half of the state.

Then there's the Mobile Delta in the southern part of Alabama. Like any other major swampy area, it has all the pieces needed for massive biodiversity (lots of water, mild winters, longer daylight, etc).

Yet, it's not just that. During the last Ice Age (which, in relative terms, wasn't that long ago), Alabama wasn't covered in glaciers. So it really wasn't a mass extinction event there. In fact, a lot of the wildlife that would be associated with anything south of taiga got pushed down into Alabama. And for other than things far more inclined to cooler temperatures like elk, most of that wildlife stayed.

These things combined make Alabama the most biodiverse state east of the Mississippi, and not Florida like many would assume. Other nearby states have similar aspects, but not in the same degree. For example, Georgia has pretty much all the same things except the different Appalachia strata hitting the coastal plain.

It might be easy to miss since the logo for Jack's can look similar to Jack in the Box's if you're not paying attention.

It's more likely that permits are used to estimate population growth. That said, the estimates were noticeably wrong with regards to some states. Alabama, for example had a population estimate for 2020 that was over a 100k under the census count, and while the census number was within the margin of error in the follow up survey (which also basically knocked out all of NY's 2010-2020 population gains), it showed that the census count in Alabama leans more towards being an undercount.

That said, part of it might be that the requirement a permit to build house in Alabama might be a little loose in parts of Alabama. I don't know if you need one in Bibb County, for example, and that's part of one of the biggest metro (albeit the most rural part of that metro).