Comparisons for Political purposes in regards to Crime, Poverty, Economics, and Healthcare can be highly inaccurate as the differences between Big Cities and Suburbs can be significant.
In fact, larger area comparisons, like State-by-State, are also highly inaccurate as a single city can easily skew the entire state's numbers. [1]
Many in the Main Stream Media would like to cite studies showing that Republican Controlled "state" legislatures have the poorest states while Democratically Controlled "state" legislators have the "richest" states. Yet, in every Red State, it's always those Democratically controlled "cities" and ghettos, that drag the statistics for an entire state down.
State-by-State comparisons are just too big of a geographical area to use as even the suburbs can easily make bad cities look good, from a state wide view.
Some states and cities have enabling Social Carrot policies (Hand Outs) that attract the Irresponsible Poor, Homeless, Criminals, and Drug Addicts all of which easily skew state and city statistics and political comparisons.
While California has high minority counts via Hispanics and Asians, Blacks make up only 6.5% of population w/ WA at 3.7% & OR at 2%
Next, Utah has a Free Housing program for Homeless who are typically suicidal. That one "free housing" program can easily skew Utah's statewide statistics making the rest of Utah look bad.
ADDENDUM
Blue Cities do NOT bring in the tax revenue as it's the surrounding RED Metro Suburbs that generate the real tax revenue while not incurring the massive social spending of the Urban Blue Cities that fuels the endless Cycle of Poverty and Crime.
In other words, "white flight" or "voting with one's feet".
