Additional Evidence That California Is Its Own Country
While Italy has a larger population than California, with 60.3 million people compared to 39.5 million in the latter, the latter is plainly larger in terms of land. California easily fits over all of Italy, even crossing a few borders into Swiss territory, as shown on the map.
Let’s look at some data to get a sense of the size of the country vs the size of the state: Italy has a land area of 301,340 square kilometers, while California has a land area of 403,882 square kilometers, making the country 74.61 percent the size of the state.