The 2011 Innovation Index, which combines multiple factors to provide a single indication of states' ability to transform economic conditions and capacity for innovation, provides updates from a version we published back in 2009.
Currently Missouri's index score is 87.5, up 2 points from 2009 when the state scored 85.6. Among adjacent states' scores, all below the national average, Missouri is in the middle. The highest scoring adjacent state is Illinois at 96.3 and the lowest is Arkansas at 80.9.
Three states in the region saw their Innovation Index decrease, Illinois (-3.3) , Kentucky (-2.5), and Tennessee (-1.4).
Missouri's position in the Innovation Index mirrors recent results from the Kauffman Foundation's New Economy report, which ranks Missouri's economy 33rd among states in 2010.
The statewide results show clear, even though slow, improvements in conditions in the state. But there's still a long way to go before Missouri is average in terms of innovation and even further to go before the state can be a national leader.
County level information from the Innovation Index is available here. Learn more about what the index means and how to use it here.
Finally a small sign of relief for Missouri's economic recovery -- new data released last week from the U.S. Department of Labor showed a three-tenths of a point drop in Missouri's statewide unemployment rate as the state added 24,300 jobs in March.
Preliminary estimates show Missouri's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent in March, down from 9.4 percent in February and a recession peak in late 2009 of 9.7 percent.
Missouri's unemployment rate remains relatively high compared to the national average of 8.8 percent, and among adjacent states the rate is only exceeded by Kentucky (10.2%) and Tennessee (9.5%). In contrast, one of the Show-Me-State's northerly neighbors, Nebraska, has an unemployment rate of just 4.2 percent, the second lowest in the country.
Even with recent job gains, Missouri's overall employment situation continues to sustain an overall deficit after losing 114,000 jobs during the official national recession and 151,000 between January 2008 and February 2010. As of March 2011, 138,000 jobs shed during the recession have not returned.
And as the monthly employment change chart shows, job growth still isn't steady in Missouri which suggests low employer confidence. With strong growth reported in March though, that seems to be finally turning around.
Republicans currently control an overwhelming majority of the seats in the Missouri House of Representatives. With Republicans in 105 of the 163 seats comes complete control of the legislative calendar. We rarely stop to examine how the magnitude of this control impacts how legislation advances in the chamber, in particular whether discussion ever even begins on some proposals.
To date during the 2011 legislative session, 1,144 legislative proposals have been filed with 51 percent of those proposals getting some level of activity from a committee hearing or beyond. At this point in the session---with just 3 weeks left---the other 49 percent will not likely see the light of day.
A total of 79 percent of the proposals that received some legislative action were primarily sponsored by Republicans. In other words, even though Republicans control fewer than two-thirds of the House seat, their members' legislation advances at a disproportionately faster rate. Just one-third of Democrats' 360 proposals have received any action compared to 58 percent of Republican proposals.
Controlling the agenda is, however, at the mercy of the majority and some may say that the mere fact some Democrats' proposals advanced at all is a sign of good will from Republicans.
Of course the other advantage Republicans have in this comparison over Democrats is a responsibility to govern that comes with control. That is, because Republicans chair the body's committees, those members often file major legislation or omnibus proposals. For example, Rep. Ryan Silvey, chairman of the House Budget Committee, files the state's 15 budget bills.
Our analysis of legislative activity turned up another interesting fact: second-term representatives on average see their proposals advance more than their third or even fourth term counterparts.
Based on a descriptive statistical model controlling for political party, term, type of bill (HB v HJR, HCR, etc.), and appropriations bills, a House Bill filed by a second term representative was 1.2 times more likely to see action than a third or fourth term colleagues. In fact, third and fourth term representatives had a statistically significant negative impact on the probability of advancement of a bill (p<.05). Not surprisingly, the most important factor in determining advancement of a proposal was whether a proposal was sponsored by a Republican (p<.001). A second term Republican is twice as likely to see bills advance as a Democrat with the same level of seniority. For more senior Democrats, however, the probability of success is even lower with Republican proposals being almost six times as likely to advance for fourth-term representatives.
Admittedly one of the items not controlled for in the descriptive discussion or the model above is whether substantially similar proposals were offered by multiple representatives. For example, a quick search for the term "citizenship" in the House search engine returns two similar bills add citizenship status to the state's sex offender registry (HBs 62 and 731).
The negative effects for proposals advocated by more senior members of both parties may be explained by several other factors. For instance, perhaps while those members served in previous terms their top priorities were successfully legislated leaving lower priority bills for their final term. It's also plausible that party leadership advance proposals from more junior members to improve the probability of re-election, since successfully passing a bill provides a strong campaign talking point demonstrating an individual's effectiveness as a legislator.
Whatever the reason, the central point here is still that Republican proposals are intuitively and statistically more likely to advance even to the stage of receiving a public hearing. Then again, it would be logistically infeasible for a part-time legislator told hold 1,000 hearings in the short five month legislative session. The way the legislature functions sometimes, it's a wonder action was taken on even half the proposals filed.
Then again the whole concept of representative democracy hinges on a separation of powers and functions making it difficult to modify laws unless publicus demands change.
First term Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler's (R) campaign fundraising in the first quarter of 2011 was well above average among first term Republicans in the U.S. House.
In total, Hartzler raised $262,099 between Jan. 1 and Mar. 31, according to finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission last week. An analysis by The Washington Post shows that freshman Republicans in the House raised an average of just $176,000 over the same period, indicating that Hartzler is firmly positioning herself to overcome a Democratic challenge in 2012 and a potential Republican primary.
Hartlzer's total receipts included $19,700 in transfers from other campaign committees, $113,900 from political action committees, and $126,900 from individuals.
Notable contributors include ACRE ($6k) Boeing PAC ($6k), Every Republican is Crucial PAC ($5k), Exxon PAC ($5k), Honeywell PAC ($5.5k), National Auto Dealers PAC ($5k), Rolls-Royce PAC ($2.5k), Terry Dunn, CEO of JE Dunn ($2.5k), Rudy Farber ($2.5k), Joan Langenberg, Author for the Missouri Eagle Forum ($2.5k), Glenn & Cindy Larson of the Larson Group ($19.2k), William Moore of Continental Coal ($2.5k), Edwin & Phoebe Rice of Ozark Coca-Cola ($9.6k), Craig Schnucks, President of Shnucks Market ($2.5k), and Deborah and Thomas Ward of Russell Stover ($20k).
Hartzler expended $90,000 during the period including the following major expenses:
$20k - Thompson Communications for ad buys
$20k - Nathan Adams of Nixa, MO for contingency fee
$15k - Signature Advantage for fundraising/consulting
$12k - Steve Walsh of Jefferson City, MO for contingency fee
C-SPAN's Steve Scully interviews first term Congresswoman Vicky Hartlzer (R) to discuss the Federal budget and spending issues, and take calls from around the country.
"Did the Bush tax cuts...produce the economic growth you and others expected," Scully asked in the first few minutes of the broadcast.
"It did create, it did create jobs and it did create economic growth and that's what our country needs now," Hartzler said. "To balance the budget, you know I used to teach home economics and teach personal family finance to my high school students and there's two ways how we'd talk about how to balance a budget. You can either increase the revenue or decrease your spending. And that's what we need to apply here in Washington D.C. as far as I see."
Only 47 percent of registered voters cast ballots in Missouri's U.S. Senate race, or about 43 percent of the state's voting-age population. The only worse election for turnout in the last decade was the 1998 midterm which was dominated with morality attacks against former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Kit Bond's (R) re-election, and resulted in no major power shifts in Congress.
So what was wrong with our model published last March? Why were our predictions so far off from reality? It turns out there are several reasons for the discrepancy.
Problem 1: Assumptions
Our model made assumptions eight months before the election. Coefficients used for model forecasts are based on history and are only as good as the data that feeds them. Projections of future data to feed into the model are really just best guesses. Back in March 2010, we couldn't have fully predicted this election would be a structural realignment for Congress that it turned out to be. In fact, few would have guessed last March that Democratic defeats would have been so numerous. We made assumptions about the unemployment rate and registered voters, both of which were generous assumptions.
Specifically, we assumed the statewide unemployment rate would be 9 percent in Nov. 2010, it turned out to be 9.6 percent. We assumed the voting age population of the state would be 4.51 million, off by about 25,000. More importantly though, we assumed turnout would not be driven by other exogenous factors, which results in the next problem: the 2010 was clearly an atypical election.
Problem 2: Exogenous Factors
Aside from the results, we know 2010's results were atypical for Missouri because in the last 30 years it's the only election to fall outside the 95 percent confidence interval established in our turnout model. In other words, using the actual results from 2010 our model last year projected turnout at 2.5 million (+/- 230,000). The only election to come close to this level of error was in 1994, which still fell within the confidence interval. In 1994, the model was off by 195,000 votes, but in that case projecting lower turnout than really occurred.
Problem 3: Imputation of Voting Age Population
One of the questions I've received in multiple emails about our model is why we used voting age population instead of registered voters. The reality is that both measures are valuable, yet historically voter registrations were misaligned with actual voting patterns as rolls became outdated due to deceased or migrant voters. Further, voting age population provides a smoother baseline for which to compare trended data, thus allowing at a theoretical level a better comparison point for overall voting trends.
To highlight this point, see the chart below which captures total voting age population and total registered voters. Note that the voting age population is substantially more smooth. The bars signify the differential between the two lines (voting population and registered voters). Of particular note is the incredibly small differential in 2004 when the total registrations were just 80,000 below the voting age population; this year has been the subject of considerable discussion regarding irregularities in the voter registration database.
However, the issue here rests with the fact that population between Census counts is provided as only an estimate. Our model takes the Census estimate which is a best guess of state population over 18 years of age and adjusts it to reflect an estimate at the time of the election. In other words, an imputation built on an estimate built on an estimate.
Revised Model
These three problems, though, are realities of modeling and forecasting. When we update the model to include real estimates from 2010 then re-project turnout one major, yet interesting, factor comes in to play: the significance of several regression terms falls off substantially. In particular, the unemployment rate and the dummy variable for a Senate race are no longer significant. The most significant driver of the model results becomes whether there was a Presidential race in the election cycle. In other words, most of the statistically significant drivers of variability in the projection are minimized and result in a voter turnout rate 5 percent higher than that realized in the 2010 election, mostly a result of the problems noted above.
So what does this revised model show for 2012? Assuming a 9 percent unemployment rate and a voting age population in line with the Census Bureau's current 2012 estimates, the model currently projects 2.9 million voters in the 2012 election cycle and a turnout rate of 64 percent. The rate is much higher than 2010, but then again, it will be a presidential election cycle.
How accurate will this projection be? We'll let you know after the election, after all, forecasts are just best estimates. We can be certain of one thing, it will be an interesting election cycle for Missouri with an incumbent President and Senator both vying for reelection.
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