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Sunday, June 21, 2015

Democrat vs Republican run states in terms of financial management

From multiple sources, I've heard that democrat run states have poorer fiscal positions compared to republican run states. Curious to see if this claim was true (despite personal bias), I thought of one way to test this claim. Compare state deficits to how they voted in the most recent presidential election.

Linked here is a map of which states went to which candidate in 2012. 24 states went to the republican party and 26 states went to the democrat party.

Linked here is a table of state budget shortfalls for the state fiscal year of 2013. This date is as of June 2012.

According to the data, 30 total states were facing a deficit for the state fiscal year of 2013. Of these 30, 21 states would vote democrat in the 2012 presidental election. These states are as follows.

California
Colorado
Conneticut
Florida
Hawaii
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

Of these 30 states, 9 would vote republican in the 2012 presidential election.

Alabama
Georgia
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
North Carolina
Texas

Based on these findings, 37.5% of the states that voted republican in 2012 faced a deficit in SFY 2013 (9 out of 24 states). 80.77% of the states that voted democrat in 2012 faced a deficit in SFY 2013 (21 out of 26 states).

Based on these findings, the claim that democrat run states are in poorer fiscal condition than republican run states holds some weight.

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