BREAKING—States with Dem Govs 15% better employment numbers

Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell claims that the improved numbers on the economy are a result of their policies. NOT SO! A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows states with Democratic Governors performed 15% better on the latest unemployment per capita than states with GOP Governors. The analysis took maybe 20 minutes elapsed time. Doesn’t Governor McDonnell have any staff?

You can check it yourself! The data for week ending January 28th is at the Department of Labor at this link: http://www.dol.gov/...

Plug those numbers into a spreadsheet. Next, add the list of Governors and their party affiliation. Then sort by GOP or Democrat. Now put in the state population. My results: GOP new claims -50,818 and the total population of those states 133,760,000. Democratic new unemployment claims -47,561 and the total population is 109,102,000. So per capita new claims for GOP Governor states is a reduction of 0.0380%, while per capita new claims for Democratic Governor states is a reduction of 0.0436%, a 15% better performance.

The numbers in the announcement are for 27 states with 79% of the US population. The remaining states had less than a thousand difference in new claims.

