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Did 'Race To The Top' benefit Blue states?

August 26, 2010 —

As the US Department of Education's "Race to the Top" grants were being awarded to the competing states in August, speculation was rampant that they were a political payoff to places that voted for President Barack Obama.  I investigate whether blue states really did get the money. 

In the first round of voting, Delaware and Tennessee won the grants, finishing at the top.  The former voted for Obama, and latter didn't, though the Volunteer State did have a Democratic Party governor.  In the second round of voting, the following states won: Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Florida, Rhode Island, District of Columbia, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio.  All but Georgia voted for Obama. 

So the case is closed, right?  No, this won't be my shortest column ever.  Because 15 states that applied for the money that lost, and also voted for Obama, as well as 15 that didn't vote for him that lost out.  Running a chi-square test, I find that the relationship between a state's 2008 vote and getting a Race to the Top grant is statistically significant, but not as strong a relationship as I expected (depending on whether or not you use the Pearson scores or Fisher's Exact Test, as some recommend for small samples).   

Of course, not all Department of Education grants awarded during this time were Race to the Top grants.  Mississippi won a sizable grant for its schools under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, and it neither voted for Obama, nor had a Democratic Party governor. In fact, its governor may challenge Obama in 2012. 

Maybe having a state run by a Democratic Party governor improved the chances of getting such a grant. Or maybe having a state legislature under Democratic Party control made some kind of difference with the Department of Education.  I ran the numbers for both factors too; neither was close to being statistically significant.  In other words, a state's politics had no bearing on whether it won a Race to the Top grant.   

There's another element to consider: political strategy.  Hawaii, Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts and DC are so heavily Democratic that even Michael Dukakis could win them (and he did in 1988, except for Maryland, which he lost by 3 percent).  Wouldn't it make more sense to award grants to states you NEED to win, rather than those you have in the bag in two years?  That would explain Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, but not the others.  Wouldn't a 2012 strategy award the money to more swing states, like Missouri, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan? 

There was a factor that was an even stronger indicator of receiving a grant: geography.  Eleven of the twelve winners can be found east of the Mississippi River.  Most of these are on the East Coast, too, instead of the Midwest.  And the South has its healthy share of winners (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Mississippi, if you count that other grant), while others (South Carolina, Kentucky) just barely missed out, which is pretty impressive given that not all Southern states applied. 

In conclusion, the findings are similar to those I discovered about Red states and base closings earlier this decade.  States that voted for Bush did better then, but not in all cases.  If politics is playing a role, it's not as clear as people think.