How this works
We score every city in the states you pick against your preferences instead of filtering them out. Each city gets a soft match score across five dimensions — income fit, housing fit, town size, political lean, and household-with-kids share — and we surface the top 10. That's why every answer changes the order rather than emptying the list.
Housing fit is calibrated per state: we estimate the implied home value from your monthly budget using each state's actual rent-to-price ratio, so the math doesn't drift in expensive or cheap markets the way a flat 6% yield would.
Politics weight is zero unless you pick a side, so toggling "No preference" never punishes a city. Hovering a card highlights its pin; hovering a pin highlights its card.