You are simply incorrect about that. More people voted for Trump in NYC (the typical exemplar of "the northeast") than in SFO (the exemplar of the part of California that is more pro-AI than NYC).

I think that absolute numbers in specific cities don't tell the full story. NYC also has far fewer people with college degrees than SFO, which would correlate more strongly with Trump supporters. I think that if you polled those who voted against Trump in NYC now, and asked them about their opinions on AI, you'd find they diverge significantly from those who did vote for him, whereas if you asked the same question to Trump voters and non Trump voters in SFO they would answer pretty much the same. SFO is also in California which does not have the same cultural relationship with technology as NYC or much of the Northeast, although the culture I'm describing stretches basically all over the east coast.