By Nami Sumada, The Chronicle, April 26, 2022
“The Chronicle identified the state (other than California) that best matches [each California county] in terms of its demographics, including race and ethnicity, age and income, as well as voting behavior and election results. It’s not the only way to think about similarity across places, but it’s an illuminating one.
“Based on these characteristics, San Francisco is most like Massachusetts. The two areas have similarly small shares of Black residents (5 percent in S.F. and 6.5 percent in Massachusetts), Hispanic residents (16 percent in S.F. and 13 percent in Massachusetts) and lower-income households (15-16 percent in each area earn less than $25,000 per year).
“The region most represented across the 58 California counties is the Northeast, with 22 matching with states in the area.”
The analysis showed Alameda and Santa Cruz counties, in addition to San Francisco, most similar to Massachusetts; Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, and Napa counties most similar to New Jersey; Humboldt most similar to Rhode Island; Lake County most similar to West Virginia; Mendocino County most similar to Florida; Monterey County most similar to Alaska, San Benito County most similar to Colorado; Santa Clara County most similar to Hawaii; Solano County most similar to Maryland; and Sonoma County most similar to Connecticut.