uncertainty. Not to mention, the states that the Republicans control have drastically cut employment - and it has NOT led to prosperity.
Because states can have very different economic factors, to really compare results, the best thing to do is to pair states that are very similar, but which have different leadership. This is actually not easy to do, but one comparison is pretty bad for the Republicans.
NJ is an affluent state with an abundance of jobs in R&D and in Finance. It is also a state where high school kids are among the top performing in the country. It also has a significant number of older urban centers that were once successful cities. Another state that could be described similarly is MA.
Since Governor Christie was elected in 2009, you can think of these two states as if they were testing the republican and the Democratic economic solutions. From two sources, here are the unemployment rates.
December 2009 (a month after Christie was elected - as a baseline): NJ - 10.0 MA - 9.3
December 2010 : NJ - 9.1 MA - 8.2 (Note, at least in NJ, the budget was passed in the fall of the previous year - so this year is not yet affected much by Governor Christie. MA and NJ are moving pretty much in sync - though MA is doing slightly better.)
May 2011: : NJ- 9.4 MA - 7.6 (This year it is a Christie budget and Christie is in charge - and while MA continues to improve, NJ gets somewhat worse.)
Deval Patrick was MA Governor for the entire time period.
If you look at NY, also run by a Democratic governor, the results look like MA's. What is clear is that the cuts that Christie forced through have hurt the state of NJ.
Here are the two links:
For the 2009 and 2010 data -
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/25/unemployment-rates-state-glanceFor the 2011 data: -
http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=13308(Both are simply releases of the same government data.)
It would be nice if there were other pairs. It is hard to find them because like states usually have governors of the same party. I was trying to think of any Midwestern state to pair Illinois with, but I think none have anything like Chicago. (NYC was one reason why I paired NJ to MA rather than to NY. ) In addition, many of them did not get Republicans until last November - so their full effect could not be seen yet.