Californians Seriously Only Live Here For the Weather, Beaches

California voters feel that future generations of Californians will have it much worse than they do and hate the congestion, traffic, and high cost of housing that are already here, but still love the state and would rather live here than anywhere else, shows the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll. "[M]ore than 7 in 10 voters said they would rather live in California than anywhere else, with 47 percent agreeing 'strongly' with that statement," says a release about the poll's findings. The most common reason for California love? The fantastic weather and the beach, of course.

69 percent of poll respondents (randomly sampled registered California voters) chose the climate, the beaches, and the coast as the best thing about California. "Most Californians have decided that they are willing to pay a 'weather tax' to live here," says the poll's director, who is also the executive director of the Unruh Institute of Politics of USC.

Second best, with a distant 18 percent, was "friends/family/the people," which is curious because that's kind of similar to the most hated Golden State attribute: 24 percent of voters say that Cali is overcrowded, the traffic is bad, and that there are waaay too many people. (In LA County—the nation's most populous—34 percent feel this is the worst thing about living in California.)

And it's not going to get any better as time goes on, many poll participants feel. 56 percent of voters respond that they think this generation of voters has it worse than previous generations, and 42 percent that the next generation will have to deal with an even worse California. But despite that, only about one in four voters say they're more likely to move to another state now than they were in the past, and 46 percent say there's no real difference in their plans to move away between now and the past. So even though all the bad things about California are, by their accounts, only getting worse, they're sticking to it because it's beautiful and warm.
· What's the California Dream? Sunshine [USC Dornsife]