Lynne Varner of the Seattle Times is convinced that Democratic governor Chris Gregoire is doing a fine job, in part because unemployment in the state is about average for the nation.

For now, revenue predictions are rosy.  According to the state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, reserves are headed upward of $1 billion.  The economy is fortified by an all-time low unemployment rate of 4.4 percent and job growth that outpaces the nation.

If that's a good performance, how should we grade the performance of the Republican governors of Idaho (Kempthorne, Risch and Otter)?

Want to increase your chances of getting a job?  Move to the wide-open state of Idaho.  Along with Montana, Utah and Hawaii, it is among the states with the very lowest unemployment in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nationwide, the jobless rate is at a comfortably low 4.5 percent.  But in Idaho it is exceptionally low — recently, it came in at 2.3 percent, which had the state's own analysts scratching their heads in amazement.

Do those four states have anything in common?  Well, three out of the four, all except Montana, have Republican governors.  And it may be significant that Hawaii was doing badly economically until Republican Linda Lingle won the governorship in 2002.  (She may have been cheated out of a victory in 1998.)  For more evidence, take a look at the graphic that accompanies that brief New York Times article.  You will see that, in general, states that voted for President Bush in 2004, that is, Republican states, have lower unemployment rates than states that voted for Senator Kerry, that is, Democratic states.

This pattern would not surprise the late Mancur Olson.  In his book, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Olson argued that special interest groups in democracies carve out special deals for themselves and, over time, slow growth and even cause stagnation.  Though Republicans are imperfect, they are better than Democrats at turning down special interest groups, especially unions.  It is no accident that the state with highest unemployment, Michigan, is also a state where unions have been extraordinarily powerful, for many years.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(Regulation is also the most likely reason that Idaho (and other Republican states) have less expensive housing than Washington (and other Democratic states).)