In six of the last nine years, Public Opinion Strategies has analyzed every State of the State speech for policy proposals. Overall, there were 581 policy proposals this year – 371 from Republican Governors and 196 from Democratic Governors, with the remainder from an Independent.

The first document is a summary that breaks down the percentage of proposals by issue area, both overall and by party. There are also word clusters. Key points:

• This year, the governors are focused on education (25{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} of the proposals) and the economy/jobs (18{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}), with health care (10{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}) and taxes (9{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}) the second tier focus.
• Not surprisingly, there is a different issue emphasis between Republican governors (education is the highest) and Democrats (economy/jobs takes first place, with education a close second).
• Tax policy ideas are nearly twice as likely to come from Republicans, who also place more of an emphasis on health care.
• Democratic governors paid a lot more attention to proposals about crime and drugs.

The second document, “Gubernatorial Proposals” spells out each policy idea by issue area and includes the state that it is from.

“States are the ‘idea lab’ of American public policy. Because our firm’s work is so involved in the public policy process, we have spent years carefully tracking the proposals that will be reshaping the states, and eventually our country,” said Bill McInturff, partner and co-founder.

Click here for the percentage of proposals by issue area.
Click here for the Gubernatorial Proposals.

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