If it seems like governors are always talking about education, jobs, taxes and the budget, it’s because they are. That’s the most obvious thing you’ll notice from our year-by-year analysis of Stateline’s archive of State of the State speeches from all 50 states. Look harder, and other trends emerge: a focus on “security” in 2002 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, greater emphasis on “investments” during good times and “cuts” -- whether budgets or taxes -- during recessions. We used the online tool Wordle to create these visualizations, and eliminated many common but not very telling words words (i.e., “governor” or “million”) from the analysis. (Full texts of all the speeches are below.) Word clouds are never perfect, of course, but they do give us an interesting way to understand what issues drive the agenda in state capitals.
– Christopher Swope, January 27, 2011
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