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Regarding #1: This was a quick and dirty way to picking “blue” states and assigning a value to their “blueness” without having to dig up State House and Senate party affiliations for 50 states. I’m working on the stereotype that people generally vote along party lines. Most of the states that voted for Obama and Kerry are represented by Democrats in Congress, and I assume their state legislatures are similarly Democratic.

Regarding #2: I’m not blaming the presidential candidate, just using them as a proxy to roughly gauge voter leanings. I was aware of Carcieri party, but I was also aware that Democrats out number Republicans 60:13 in the State House and 33:5 in the State Senate. There are also Democratic governors of “red” states, like Napolitano from Arizona (which has some serious budget issues).

Regarding #3: I’m with you here… It takes two to tango and eight to square dance and 12,169 to break the line dancing record. There is plenty of blame to go around and I agree that party affiliation doesn’t come close to telling the whole story.

I guess my hypothesis would be: States with liberal policies and politicians tend to have higher unemployment and budget deficits.

I was trying to be a little provocative while seriously looking at this. I have my preconceived notions, and I’m not informed enough to give this a rigorous treatment.

But I’m not sure that I get the basic hypothesis here? From your comment, it sounds like the idea is that states like Rhode Island vote for Democrats, who then create and/or perpetuate unemployment (via corruption, inefficiency, taxes, etc.)?

If that’s the hypothesis, I would respond:

(1) I don’t know that presidential-level voting data tells us much of anything — especially the 2004 data. Rhode Island voted for Kerry in 2004 and has high unemployment today. But what does John Kerry have to do with that? He lost — as president, at least, he had nothing to do with setting policy in Rhode Island that may (or may not) lead to high unemployment. As to the 2008 data, I’ll cut Obama a little slack, too, given that he’s still over a month away from taking office…

(2) But in your hypothesis, wouldn’t Rhode Island’s Republican governor for the last 5+ years — Donald Carcierei — be at least as accountable for the state’s high unemployment rate? That is, if we’re trying to assign responsibility for high unemployment, wouldn’t a state’s governor be more responsible than its (losing) presidential candidate?

As to other states — Here’s a WAY overly simplistic chart calculating average employment rate by governor’s party:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=phvycSJwqshfeBwlfXETJMw)

(3) But let me be clear again that I don’t think my chart tells us much of anything either. Governors — like presidents — don’t set policy all on their own. They have to deal with legislators. And as much as I believe in the responsibility of government to get involved here — and believe me, I do — the government cannot realistically offset everything going on in the market…

Put another way, I wish I could blame George W. Bush solely for our national economic meltdown, but I acknowledge that he’s only one player in this drama.

Maybe it hasn’t gotten bad enough for enough people to shake things up, or maybe that’s all they’ve ever known…