Red State Socialism?

One could not have caroused the internet to satisfy their desire for politics without coming across the concept of red and blue states. It is a well known concept that red represented the Republican party, while blue represented that of the Democrats. Such was not always the case, after Reagan's landslide re-election, the results were dubbed a "sea of blue". Reagan was no Democrat, but at the time blue represented the incumbent party, while red represented the aggressor party.

This all changed in 2000. With the hotly contested battle for the White House raging on following election day, the map of red and blue states was constantly plastered on our television screens, or in many cases our AOL homepage (heh). As the weeks dragged on, seeing Bush and the Republicans with red states and Gore and the Democrats with blue states established what would become a permanent fixture of American politics; the red state/blue state divide.

The concept is simple, we classify states for political purposes based only on what party they vote for in presidential elections.

Some time ago, a particular graphic appeared all over the internet, and has become a staple of many red state vs. blue state confrontations;



After some research, I traced the origin of the chart to the Democratic Action Team.

The chart basically shows the difference between federal fund allocation to each state, as well as the federal tax revenue generated by each state. The data is from 2005, years before the economy collapsed.

The U.S. Census Bureau prepares a Consolidated Federal Funds Report every year, which outlines total federal expenditure by state. Data since 1993 is available for viewing online [link]. The IRS records tax revenue by state, with data viewable here [link]. The latest complete figures are available for 2008. The Census will release 2009 data on spending in June.

For extra fun, I put together my own chart using Excel, which is updated for 2008 and includes the swing states for the 2008 election;



As you can see, there is quite a change in only 3 years. Part of it pertains to the recession in the later part of 2008, which required significant emergency spending by the federal government, and a drop in revenues throughout the states. Utah appears to have the most balanced spending ratio, receiving exactly $1.00 for every $1.00 in taxes. 8 other states also have decent ratios, when considering the range of within 10¢ of $1.00 as ideal.