Wow, 23% actually hit Iran and it looks like most of them at least knew that it was somewhere in the middle east! I once saw a similar thing where people were asked to point at North Korea, and the train of thought for quite a few of them obviously was: - it is dangerous, gotta be a big country - it is called north something so it has to be somewhere in the north. ....and they pointed at Canada. Or Russia. Or China. Or Greenland. Or Alaska.... Disclaimer: It might or might not be a fact that Americans are especially bad at this, I honestly cannot tell you. But I can say for a fact that there are enough people over here in Europe that are equally bad at geography. So please don't take it as an attack on y'all, my American friends. (Still curious why so many pointed at... Kansas, approximately).
Well, in their defense, Kansas is kind of the middle of nowhere. I find that people in general aren't very good at geography anymore. Too reliant on their ability to ask their phones stuff.
Some time ago a colleague and I installed geography quiz apps on our phones and battled each other. We consider us pretty good in geography and on an unlabeled map we could indeed find all European countries, most in North and South America, and most in Asia. However we noticed that we had a hard time in Oceania (lot of tiny island states), the Caribbean (likewise) and parts of Africa. So everyone has deficits somewhere. For us it was interesting to see where they were. I recommend that app to everyone, go test yourself! It is called "World Map Quiz" on the Google play store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qbis.guessthecountry&hl=en