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Saturday, November 01, 2003
Swing States in Worse Economic Shape
Posted by DavidNYCDHinMI, guest-hosting over at Kos, picks out an important nugget at the end of this NYT piece:
Compared with the rest of the country, jobs have disappeared more quickly, and incomes and house prices have grown more slowly in the nine states won by the winner in the last three presidential elections, according to Economy.com, a research company. Besides New Hampshire, the states are Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia."They're just getting pummeled by global competition and off-shore outsourcing," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com."
Apart from Kentucky (which had a spread of -14), all of these states are on the SSP list.
On a related note, DH also observes that even if the economy starts to improve, voter perceptions may not catch up with reality. In other words, if Joe Citizen still thinks the economy sucks, that will inform his decisions, regardless of what the facts say. My argument has been that reality may not match up with "reality": Just because the economy's performance meets the dictionary definition of the word "recovery" does not mean that we are experiencing a bona fide, job-creating, wealth-enhancing upswing.
And even if we do start to experience something that feels like a genuine recovery, it may simply be too late for it to have enough of an actual effect by election day. Unemployment, which stood at 4.1% when Bush took office, is now ay 6.1%. The President is running out of time to put a significant dent in this figure. Oh, Bush can (and will) flog the GDP numbers all he wants, but those aren't the numbers that matter to ordinary citizens. And evidently, this is going to be an even tougher sell in a big bunch of crucial swing states.
Posted at 10:01 PM in Economy | Technorati
Comments
democratic party leadership is not doing enough to capitalize on the blunders of this adminidtration. the dnc has lost governorships in california, kentucky, missisipi. Lost seats in texas. lost the mid term elections. It is going to be another close race in 04. Bush has already made his strategy clear with his intense focus on these swing states. the dnc most match this intensity on grassroots organization and fund raising and also stay on messege. Also, as dean said, poor white southerners with confederate flags should not be left out...
Posted by: yannick at November 30, 2003 02:25 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
We the people have recovered info about this
current election. We think that J-Lo should
be the President and the new reform has
been set to remove the Westside of Buffalo to
England
Posted by: Nukey at October 8, 2004 10:08 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
We'll get ahead as soon as we get rid of
obtuse stuff like Swing States etc. Can't you see
see Ben Franklin talking this out with
the others?
Jack S. Karnes
Posted by: Jack S. Karnes at October 29, 2004 02:28 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
To bad ya lost!
Posted by: robet noble at November 11, 2004 07:13 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment