sisyphusshrugged | red ink in red states

Perhaps we can make something of this

How big of an issue will the economy be on Election Day? Pollsters have been saying that it's a top concern for undecided voters. That makes sense, given that people with strong feelings about foreign policy, civil rights or the candidates' personalities have probably made up their minds already. But could differences in economic performance among the states actually determine how the election shakes out?

The answer is a definite maybe. Traditionally, economists have doubted that a president or his party can dictate the overall path of the economy. "Most economists assume that the major person who can affect the business cycles in the economy is Alan Greenspan," said Ray C. Fair, an economics professor at Yale who has studied economic trends and elections for decades.

But things may be different at the state level. Economists and political scientists say that some presidential policies can have a direct and predictable impact on state economies, at least in the short term.

"In some ways you can actually do more at the local level," said Alan J. Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California. "An example would be the steel tariffs. They probably had a negligible impact on the economy as a whole, but they certainly had an impact on the particular steel mills affected by the tariffs."

Voters sure seem to think that the White House can make a difference. A look at recent polls and the electoral map suggests that people may hold the president responsible for their states' economic fate.

Though his recent campaign speeches have focused on terrorism and the war in Iraq, the president must know that the economy is important to voters. After all, the economy was the issue that thwarted his father's re-election bid, and, according to recent polls like the IssuesPA/Pew survey in Pennsylvania last month, it is also the chief concern of undecided voters this time.

As a result, the economy could be the determining factor in the election. So how have the 13 swing states, as classified by The New York Times, using poll analysis and projections, fared under President Bush? Not very well. The average increase in the unemployment rate in the swing states was 1.2 percentage points from January 2001 to August 2004. That performance was worse than the averages for states that are expected to back the president and those likely to support Senator John Kerry. States that are expected to vote Republican, according to The Times's handicapping, had an increase of 0.8 percentage points in their unemployment rate, while Democrat-leaning states had an average increase of 0.9 percentage points.

SO, will those swing states reject the president because of the economy? Looking at unemployment rates may be only the first step toward an answer. According to some political scientists, the relationship between the economy and the casting of electoral votes could involve a complex combination of local and national forces.

Daron R. Shaw, an associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said voters were most likely to be influenced by an issue when it had surfaced at the national level and begun to resonate locally. He cited jobs moving abroad as the most recent example on the economic front.

"The notion of outsourcing - people say, 'I've seen that,' " Professor Shaw said. A feeling that the president has done little to deal with outsourcing abroad, he argued, may have loosened Republicans' hold on some states that they won in 2000. "The people who were most at risk over the last four years also tend to be the sorts of cultural conservatives - blue-collar Democrats - that flipped West Virginia and helped Bush carry Ohio last time,'' he said. "It's the particular nature of unemployment in this last cycle that has brought them into play.