By land area Canada is about 20 times as large as California, by culture I'd consider Canada to have a few much more distinct areas than California (comparing Toronto vs. Vancouver vs. Calgary the distinctions are pretty close to the range you'd get across the whole of California by my opinion - with Quebec being radically different... Quebec is less like Vancouver than Texas or Mississippi is like California). By population there's only a really narrow difference between the two - so I really don't agree with that assessment.

Also, as a former Vermonter please don't you dare call me a New Hampshirite - but for a survey like this you can probably lump everything from Philly to Bangor into one chunk.

> By land area Canada is about 20 times as large as California

Cornfields and tundra don't post on HN much.

Now now, we also have forests and lakes.

And so many mosquitos - we've got an entire province solely inhabited by mosquitos (within a margin of error) that we call Manitoba!

Thank you for stopping at Bangor, parts of Maine south of there are Northern Massachusetts!

And larger than all the remaining 49 states. Why divide by states then?

Because the alternative to not dividing by states is have a monolithic US, vastly larger than all other geographic units.

Like, pick a threshold of size N. Start at the top, divide at countries, and the recursively keep dividing any given node until you have passed under the threshold N. California gets divided before Canada (and the UK).