The Vermont town of Springfield has bested 13 other U.S. competitors with the same name to become the official home of TV family the Simpsons and to host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie.

Vermont's Springfield has won the honour of being the official hometown of TV family The Simpsons.
(Associated Press)

The community in southeastern Vermont submitted a winning video entry that included footage of a local TV personality dressed as patriarch Homer Simpson and chasing a giant doughnut. The town racked up 15,367 votes in the USA Today-run poll, beating an Illinois competitor by 733 votes.

"This is an exciting, exhilarating moment for Vermonters," Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas said in a statement.

"Perhaps more importantly, it proves there's really nothing a giant doughnut can't do. To all the other Springfields, I say 'Don't have a cow, man.'"

The contest, held to promote the release of the long-awaited animated film, pitted a host of U.S. towns against one another as they vied for the honour of being proclaimed the official hometown of the beloved, but dysfunctional family: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

Organizers whittled entries down to 14 video submissions from Springfields across the United States, with a range of politicians and personalities from the competing states enlisted to participate.

The final Springfield competitors:
Vermont, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee.

Many offered classic Simpsons quips like Timothy Davlin, the mayor of Illinois' Springfield, who said rivals could "eat my shorts."

Members of the public were then invited to vote for their favourite.

Springfield, Vt. — which, with just 9,300 residents, had the competition's lowest population — was a latecomer to the contest. Officials only decided to join after members of the local chamber of commerce saw a news report about the competition.

The town will host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie on July 21. The film opens to wide release on July 27.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening has said in interviews that he chose to set his long-running animated series in Springfield because he discovered the name was one of the most common among U.S. towns.

However, writers for the satirical series have always been ambiguous regarding which state the town was located.

With files from the Associated Press