Colorado is one of just three states that shifted from mostly Republican to mostly Democratic control in the last two decades according to Ballotpedia. Four states went the other way between the decade ’92-’02 and the ’03-’13 decade.

How did that work out? A common measure is change in state gross domestic product, as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Using that measure, when Republicans mostly controlled Colorado’s state government, we ranked #3 in GDP growth. Once labor union and liberal millionaire campaign cash took over state government, we dropped to #41. Colorado had the worst drop in economic ranking of any state. We went from doing nicely better than the US as a whole to underperforming.

States that were strongly Democratic-dominated across the two decades had an average GDP growth rank of about 25th from the top. Strongly Republican-dominated states’ average rank was #19. The difference between these two groups? Republican-dominated states experienced 15% more growth than Democratic led states. That’s a lot of jobs created when Republicans control state government.

Perhaps other factors impact a state’s economic performance besides whether Democrats or Republicans control the state government.

BUT, ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE THAT WHO RUNS THINGS DOESN’T MATTER?

Me neither.