Or are you just trying to count every row that has text in the state column? It would be helpful to have a clearer understanding of your needs. 

You would need to create a table with all of the possibilities in one column (State Column) and the following formula in another column (Count Column).

=COUNTIFS({Master Sheet State Range}, [State Column]@row)

For the range you would follow the appropriate steps to create a cross sheet reference and select the column on the first sheet that houses the state selections.

The [State Column]@row portion just says to count the range if it equals whatever is in the [State Column] for whatever row the formula is sitting on.

EDIT: I do remember seeing some posts about dynamic dropdowns somewhere here in the community. I imagine any solutions presented in those would give some pretty good insight into making a dynamic listing of what has been used.

Otherwise...

I haven't been able to find a way without going outside of Smartsheet. Due to SS's lack of parsing, it is A LOT more work than it is worth.

You would have to use a JOIN/COLLECT in conjunction with a helper column to pull the list of unique entries from the master sheet then use a series of MID statements in the rows going down the column to parse it out. You would have to add enough MID statements to account for all 50 rows in case all are eventually selected at least once. By the time you get that done, copy/pasting from dropdown is A LOT faster and easier.

Typically if the options are in a dropdown column, I will open the column properties, select all and copy, then paste it into a sheet. I have also done something similar in reverse to maintain alphabetical order in my dropdown lists.