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According to a national poll, Mountain View and the surrounding region is the happiest place in the whole country.
The Gallup Healthways Well Being Index, which tracks national happiness levels on a daily basis, recently began breaking down the results by congressional district. Ranking at the top is California’s 14th Congressional District, which includes Mountain View, much of Silicon Valley and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“Of 435 districts in the country, people in Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s district apparently feel happier than in any other district in the country,” said city manager Kevin Duggan. “I think it’s great.”
He added, “It’s good that people feel good about their circumstances in such trying times.”
The city of Sunnyvale has pounced on the poll results, and now claims to be “the happiest place in America” in a press release on its Web site. The accolade comes from TV personality “Dr. Oz,” who for his Nov. 9 show contrasted Sunnyvale to the city of Hazard in Kentucky, which is in the least happy congressional district in the country, according to the poll.
The 14th congressional district stretches from Sunnyvale through Mountain View and Palo Alto to parts of Redwood City, Belmont and San Carlos to the north. It also stretches to the coast to cover Half Moon Bay, Ben Lomond, Scotts Valley and other less densely populated areas in Santa Cruz County.
Gallup says the survey sample represents 98 percent of the adult population, including households that have begun using cell phones instead of landlines. On a daily basis, about 1,000 people are asked dozens of questions about everything from job satisfaction to how often a person laughs.
The poll’s results by district are available at www.ahiphiwire.org/wellbeing. A map of the 14th district is available here.
This is the best town in the whole world.
He added, “It’s good that people feel good about their circumstances in such trying times.”…Yeah, well I would be a happy employee working for you and the people of this happy place if you were not cutting our jobs. Come June we are told we are losing our positions. First time in Mountain View history, employees are being cut. Not you maybe cut…our boss told us you will be. I guess his “great job” of not having to lay any one off will become reality. Thanks for buying that church and spending 9.5 million on a piece of land for possible development. Really people are …not just positions… not so happy. So the citizen will be not so happy when the city says sorry we don’t to this or that for you any more. We are short staffed.
I will be happy when the city is too poor to continue its massive over-funding of the mountain view police department.
This article begs the question……
Do we choose to live in this part of the world because it’s considered the happiest place in the USA or is this the happiest place in the USA because we choose to live here?
Boy Alan, you sure know how to party.
Great news. Finally someone else agrees with me. I have said the same thing to all my friends. This place has great people and great weather and safe surroundings. I said this to myself 18 years back when I moved here. For me This is Shangri-La.
Look at the beautiful mountains and the open-space districts we can visit and explore year-round. How about Shoreline Park and the bay lands….great place to spend some time. Fabulous fall colors on many of our beautiful trees – spectacular this time of year. Average daytime temperatures year round- 65 to 75. I’m happy 🙂
I would be happier if the council looked into replacing the old bmx track with a new one
I’m pretty happy.
Wow! Does this mean that we beat out Disneyland?? Take that Mickey!!
Fantastic! I did chose to live here and I agree!
I wonder if the poll reached the many immigrants living 10-12 to an apartment along California Ave or those lined up along El Camino looking for work.
This town is a little full of itself and polls like this are really meaningless anyway.
I’m pretty happy here. I’ll be even happier when I take high-speed rail from downtown Mountain View to SF/SJ and LA 🙂
I LOVE living here. I love eating at restaurants with outdoor seating on Castro St and watching the world go by. I love walking to Trader Joe’s from my house. I love the Farmers Market – 4th biggest in CA and we’re only 73,000. I love walking along the bay at Shoreline Park. And I love having such smart, interesting friends and neighbors. I love it, I love it, I love it!
I love living here also. I laugh at people who always find something NEGATIVE to say. It must be tough living with such a negative frame-of-mind.
Downtown is top-notch; great movie theater; fantastic shoreline park; fantastic Cuesta Park; one hour drive from San Francisco (less by caltrain); two hours to Napa Valley; 3.5 hours to Lake Tahoe! Oh My, Oh My! Somebody stop me! I am SOOO HAPPY living in Mountain View 😉
Yes, somebody stop him.
I’m a research nerd. Gallup Polls are like the USA Today of the research world.
A more thorough collection of data would include how many residents are currently being prescribed antidepressant medication. But then again, there would be confidentiality issues with that.
Are we really all that happy?
If You get what you pay for… We better be happy.
Can we get a better golf course? With no fowl poop?
Happiness is not a state of being, it is a state of mind. You can be happy when you have reason to be happy, and unhappy when you have reason, both in the same day.
So yes, I agree that such a survey is meaningless, and maybe someone is crowing a bit.
It’s okay to crow. But if those who are absurdly fortunate forget about everyone else, or do not see everyone else, or do not care about everyone else, then maybe there is something wrong.
It would be nice to make MV a gated town, only residents could enter. No immigrants.
i’ve lived in mtn view all my life and love it. i even vacation here. just wish i could get a date but Silicon Valley is such a sausage-fest – too many damned engineering pricks. Any “happy” ladies about 42ish seeking companionship within walking distance of downtown ? all ethnicities & races welcome.
I love it here! Grateful for good health, lovely daughter and good man who loves me for me, how could I complain? According to world standards, I’m rich!! But I feel rich having good friends and a loving family and very grateful for my part-time job. My husband has a job, although he is laid off for a week from Stanford this week and three weeks at Christmas time. It can be tough to make rent, but we always manage. So, if you wanna be negative, stop and think about what and who you have in your life. If you don’t have anyone, go out and make someone’s day by being kind and friendly. It worked for me=>