April 05, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Red State, Blue State unemployment redux redux
Last spring, and then again last summer and once in the fall, I threw the state unemployment numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, added some other pertinent info, and then ran a few different numbers. After narrowing the field a bit, namely to those states where the margin of victory for Bush over the combination of Gore plus Nader was 7 points or less. Then, I computed the change in the unemployment rate from when Bush was installed to the last month's month's report.
Since it's been a while, and things are purportedly getting so much better for job seekers, I thought it might be time to run the numbers again. I expanded the field just a bit, as I noticed Maine is now considered a potential battleground state, due mostly to our splitting of electoral votes.
While things have improved slightly (0.1 - 0.3%) for some of the most vulnerable red states, Ohio has worsened by 0.1% while Arkansas' unemployment rate dropped by 0.5%. But overall, seeing that all of these states except Arkansas fall within the top 50% in the increase in unemployment rate, with Colorado ranked 1st, Democrats should be pouring their money into the West/Southwest with unabandoned enthusiasm, hoping to convince voters there that Bush's economic policies have caused nothing but job loss and pain, and hope lies with responsible Democratic leadership.
This also spells good news for Democrats vying for Ben Campbell's seat, as well as proponents of various measures to soften or repell Colorado's draconian TaBoR amendment, which clearly lead to much of the mess Colorado now finds itself in. Hopefully, here in Maine we will avoid a similar fate by refusing to concede any form of TaBoR legislation the state GOP is trying foist on us in return for a bipartisan tax reform proposal.