In Buffalo at least, natural gas is currently a third the price of electricity. From a cost perspective, it's pretty clear that the right approach is to go with a furnace alone. Here, you'd be crazy to consider electric resistive heating.
If electric and gas were equally priced, with 30kWh costing the same as 1 Therm, I'd go with gas for environmental reasons. A bean counter would go for electric alone, to avoid having to spend thousands on having a furnace installed.
With your mild weather and expensive gas, a heat pump would be a great choice. It does the same job as an electric resistive heater, on half as much electricity. It also provides A/C functionality.
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