California and Florida compared

What this data cannot show

• Both are among the ten most populous states, which is why this pair is published rather than one of the 1,275 possible pairs.
• A rate here divides by the population the reporting agencies covered, not by everyone who lives in the state. That is the FBI’s own denominator and it is why the covered population is shown as a measure rather than left implicit.
• These two states did not report equally. Agencies covering 100.0% of California reported and 84.4% of Florida, a gap of 15.6%. A gap above 10 points is enough that the difference between these two rates is partly a difference in who reported, and this comparison cannot separate the two.
• Florida fell below 90% coverage, so its figures describe a smaller share of the state than the other’s do.
• The FBI cautions against ranking jurisdictions against one another. This page puts two side by side with the coverage that produced each, which is the most a reader can be given without the comparison asserting more than the data holds.