Results of Round 2 of the Strongest Town Contest

We’re back with the results of Round 2. Voting closed yesterday afternoon at 12 p.m. CDT. Once again, thousands of votes were cast and—wow!—most of the contests were close. Here are the final tallies:

Bentonville, AR (52%) vs. Kenmore, WA (48%)

Oxford, MS (53%) vs. Yellow Springs, OH (47%)

Lockport, IL (61%) vs. Middleton, WI (39%)

Bismarck, ND (57%) vs. Northfield, VT (43%)

We’re grateful to the teams from Kenmore, Yellow Springs, Middleton and Northfield. They did a lot of work to get this far, and they represented their cities exceptionally well. We are also grateful that they introduced the Strong Towns audience to just some of the things their towns are doing to become stronger; there is much to admire and learn from each.

The final four contestants—Bentonville, Oxford, Lockport and Bismarck—return on Tuesday, March 30 for the semifinal round. We will be presenting podcast interviews with representatives from each city. You won’t want to miss them.

You can catch up on the whole contest here. We’ll leave you with where the Strongest Town bracket stands right now: