By almost any measure: budget solvency, long-run solvency, service-level solvency, or the combo “fiscal condition”, the maps look mostly like the blue-red divide, with “blue” on the insolvent/bad fiscal condition side. I mean, here are the five worst “fiscal condition” states:
New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California
or, if you think that’s just a fluke, the next five worst:
New York, Maryland, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, West Virginia
In general, the study provides a bit of an insight into which kind of politics, locally, lead to better financial health of states.
I don’t know if I’d reach the same conclusion. There are a lot of “red” states with a large “blue” metro area that skews things. For example, Illinois–you just CANNOT talk about the state as a whole with any meaning. I’m pretty sure California is the same way.
Once again, it’s the Illinois Problem (thanks, Elemenopy): By land area, Montana is two-thirds West Dakota and one-third Western Washington Of The Northern Rockies. We don’t have the Problem* quite as bad as Illinois does, but trying to compare Missoula to Havre is a fool’s errand just the same. Limiting this to just one axis, Missoula has a fairly useful city bus system with non-trivial scheduled routes and Havre can barely keep a private taxi service in business.
*(Which isn’t a problem unless you’re trying to use states as your measure of economic success.)
(I was born in the non-Chicagoland part of Illinois, BTW.)