Bay Area residents most upbeat about California

The Sacramento Bee has reported that more residents of the San Francisco Bay Area think that California is “one of the best places to live” than any other part of the State, but, but this poll has changed through the years depending on the economy and politics of the time:

Residents who are California Dreamin’, believing the Golden State is among the best places to live, most likely reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, a new poll reveals. In a Field Poll index on how residents view living and working in the state, 67 percent of residents in the nine-county Bay Area say they consider California “one of the best places to live.” No other California region was close in the poll results released Wednesday. Fifty-five percent of residents in other Northern California counties and 41 percent of Central Valley residents felt California was among the best places to live. By comparison, 47 percent of Los Angeles County residents, 46 percent of Orange County and San Diego County residents and 43 percent of other Southern California residents rated the state among the best… Fifty percent of respondents in the March 20-31 survey of 1,093 registered voters statewide rated California as one of the best places to live. Twenty-nine percent said the state was “nice but not outstanding.” Sixteen percent rated the state as average and 4 percent said California was a poor place to live.

Those numbers were slightly better than the attitudes expressed by California voters in a similar poll in 2003. They were far better than in 1992 — the year of economic turmoil and the Los Angeles civil unrest after the Rodney King police beating verdict — when only 33 percent of state voters viewed California as one of the best places to live. But Californians don’t think nearly as much of their state as they did in Field Polls between 1967 and 1985 — when 70 percent to 78 percent of respondents characterized the state as an outstanding place to be. “You had the perspective then of California as a promised land, as a place where there is endless opportunity,” DiCamillo said. “The housing prices hadn’t yet started their steep rise. California was a place people felt really privileged to be.“

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