What state is most similar to Ontario?

[King of Kensington]

Geographically probably most like Michigan as it shares the centrality of the Great Lakes with Michigan, but Toronto is a Toronto metro area makes up about half the population and gives it a very different character economically and culturally.  NY like Ontario is liberal, diverse and has a largely "rust belt" economy outside its largest city.  But NYC further removed from rust belt than Toronto is (Toronto arguably in it if not of it) and Toronto in many respects more Chicago-like as one of the two leading Great Lakes cities.  Downstate Illinois really nothing like Ontario though.  Overall Ontario has similar urbanization level of New York and Illinois.

[King of Kensington]

Northern Ontario is similar to Northern Michigan (in other words, lots and lots of trees). Though, Toronto is nothing like Detroit. Nor was the province ever singularly focused on one principal industry as highly as Michigan was tied to the automobile. Ontario being divided between the Toronto region and everything else is similar to New York being divided between the New York City region and everything else. Plus, both contain their country's largest cities.  I agree with Chicago being quite similar to Toronto. Both have similar histories and economies. Neither would exist without the respective great lake they border. Illinois would be easily the US state most similar to Ontario if Wisconsin were a part of it. The same might also be true if Northern Ontario was its own province.

The big outliers in the Ontario/Michigan comparison are Toronto and Detroit.  SW Ontario is rather Michigan-like.  Windsor and Sarnia are very rust belt-y.  London the main regional center of the region was never really a heavy manufacturing town, but could perhaps be compared to Grand Rapids or Lansing.

Northern Ontario somewhat resembles the Iron Range of Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Eastern Ontario doesn't really line up with anything in the US well though.  It's not rust belt like Upstate NY.  Half of its population is in the national capital region (Ottawa).  The North Country/Thousand Islands region of NY is very thinly populated.

While Toronto dominates not sure if there's really a "rest of Ontario" identity akin to Upstate NY or Downstate IL, they're all so different.  Northern and Southern Ontario is the main divide, they are more different than any of these southern subregions. 

 

[King of Kensington]

Of course if Canada had US-style voting patterns, Hamilton, the Niagara region, Windsor and Northern Ontario would be a lot more Trumpy. 

[King of Kensington]

Given the comments so far - assuming the "other" votes are for Minnesota?

[King of Kensington]

Ohio is far less diverse and more conservative than the US as a whole though.

[King of Kensington]

In some ways SW Ontario is to Toronto what Michigan is to Chicago.

Chicago and Toronto, the two global cities of the Great Lakes region, with diverse economies and on the edges of the Manufacturing Belt* are both about a 4 hour drive  from Detroit.  And going west from Toronto or east from Chicago you pass through pretty similar terrain.

* Chicago feels more "Rust Belt" though - yes the downtown and lakefront neighborhoods are prosperous but the drive through South Side and into NW Indiana is very "rust belt" indeed and it does have the history of Carl Sandberg and all that.  Toronto has a lot of "un-Midwestern" characteristics in the inner city - the narrow streets, neighborhoods like Cabbagetown and Kensington Market etc.  

[King of Kensington]

FWIW, NYC and London are the two Alpha ++ cities.

Toronto is an "Alpha" city in the same tier as Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami.  A notch below but still in the Alpha ranks are Houston, Montreal, San Francisco and Washington DC.

https://www.spottedbylocals.com/blog/alpha-beta-and-gamma-cities/

[King of Kensington]

Is Chicago more "worldly" or "cosmopolitan" than Toronto?  They seem to be of a similar stature overall.  Toronto is a lot more of a "city of immigrants" like NYC or Los Angeles than Chicago is.  Chicago is more established and the US is a bigger deal than Canada.  Seems like a draw.

[King of Kensington]

Toronto has less of an obvious US match than Vancouver/Seattle or even Calgary/Denver.

[King of Kensington]

Chicago, Queens NY and Los Angeles. 

[King of Kensington]

On a technical basis, Illinois might seem like it would work but nothing in Illinois really resembles Canada (downstate Illinois would be "sui generis" in Canada). New York would work if it wasn't for the fact that NYC is arguably the world's most important city. Michigan is, quite literally, like Ontario though. Culturally speaking, these two places are siblings! I wouldn't over think the Toronto-Detroit analogy tbh.

Illinois is in the heart of the Corn Belt (a fully American region) and Chicago dominates Illinois in a way Toronto doesn't in Ontario.  Michigan does share a lot of geographic similarities with Ontario: the centrality of the Great Lakes and a "Northwoods" type region.    

Ontario shares some cultural similarities with the "Lakes states" of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

[King of Kensington]

Not a huge bearing on anything, but Toronto sports teams (Raptors and Blue Jays) play in eastern divisions with New York and Boston, rather than in the central divisions with Chicago and Detroit.

[King of Kensington]

I think there's actually a decent argument to be made that DC in some ways is the US city most similar to Toronto, in that both are 'rising cities' as DFB put it, but also have actually large pre-car urban cores.

That is a good analogy.  DC and Toronto had similar postwar growth trajectories.  Both were "second tier" (i.e. top 15) metropolitan areas of around 900,000 in 1940 and have similar populations today.  

And DC suburbs are more "sunbelt" like as they are largely post-1980 compared to other cities in the BosWash corridor.  The "905" region surrounding Toronto is also rather "sunbelt" like in typology.

[King of Kensington]

A lot of the older parts of Toronto and Hamilton look like this:

https://tinyurl.com/45dzn3rj

[King of Kensington]

Michigan had an Ontario imprint.  It had the second largest number of Canadian-born in 1930 (after Massachusetts), and Canadians were the largest foreign-born group in the state.  But obviously they've diverged significantly since.

[King of Kensington]

Geographically Ontario lines up quite well the Great Lakes basin/region:

https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/michigan/Maps_Graphics/Watershed.pdf