Polish-Americans are highly concentrated among the Great Lakes region of the United States, showing much less diffusion than some of the other ancestries I’ve looked at, like the Irish.

Aside from their fairly specific geographic distribution, the Polish-American population doesn’t hold many surprises. I had thought there’d be more Poles, but one problem with preconceptions about ancestry is that there are so many different ancestries which make up the American landscape that it’s difficult to get a handle on all of them at once, as well as their relative prevalence. When I approach the end of this project, I do hope to put together a single map showing multiple ancestral/ethnic groupings at once — but I’m running into technical difficulties, and it remains a challenging work in progress. Cross your fingers for me!

Here’s a link to my Tableau on Polish-Americans, so you can drill down, zoom in, etc:

https://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/jared5561#!/vizhome/supercensus/Polish