Robert David Sullivan 2

The 2009 export market for calculating Massachusetts (and scrappy Rhode Island)

The Herald's Jay Fitzgerald reports that exports from Massachusetts companies fell by 20 percent in the first half of 2009, "thanks to the global recession." (Nationally, the drop in exports was about 24 percent.) Exports of our most popular items, "computers and electronic products," were down by 22 percent.

The map below shows the biggest category of exports for each state, based on data from the US Department of Commerce's TradeStats Express.

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Ryan is top baby name in Mass. and nowhere else

Bay Staters insist that Ryan is the best name for a newborn boy, but the rest of the country is "meh" about the moniker.

The Social Security Administration has posted baby names by state for 2008 (go here for new and historical data), and Massachusetts was the only state where the Irish-flavored Ryan was on top. Nationally, Ryan finished 18th, and the top names were Jacob, Michael, and Ethan. As the map below shows, Michael was big in the Northeast, while Jacob was strong in the Midwest and northern New England, and Ethan was a mostly Western tag. William dominates the South but isn't wildly popular anywhere else, and Daniel was big in only the biggest state (California). Jayden was first in Florida, and Britney Spears may be an explanation.

 

There were fewer geographical oddities with girls' names.

Southern NE, Hawaii have fewest gun victims

The Violence Policy Center yesterday released a ranking of the states by frequency of deaths by firearms. The gun control group concludes states with tougher laws against firearms, such as Massachusetts, have the fewest fatalities:

The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and Nevada. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000 for 2006. Each state has lax gun laws and higher gun ownership rates. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.

The VPC's spin is understandable, but it could be implying more causality than really exists. Massachusetts has long had a low level of gun ownership compared with the rest of the US, so it's unsurprising that there are fewer gun deaths here -- and unsurprising that strong gun control is politically palatable. If Louisiana and Massachusetts swapped gun laws, I doubt that their rankings in the VPC chart would change all that much.

At any rate, here's how the numbers look geographically:

Starbucks hunkers down in Massachusetts

The Boston Business Journal reports that Massachusetts will be unaffected by the shuttering of about 200 Starbucks locations across the US. Perhaps we're not cutting back on pricey coffee to the extent that people in other states are, presumably a good economic sign. Or maybe Starbucks just doesn't want to give Dunkin' Donuts the satisfaction of a retreat in DD's home region.

The map below shows where Starbucks had the most outlets per capita as of the end of 2008. Massachusetts ranked 16th, with 210 locations for 6.5 million people -- or 3.23 for every 100,000 residents. But our ranking is certain to rise as stores are closed elsewhere.

Starbucks' birthplace, Washington, is first among states, with 10.23 stores for every 100,000 people. But Washington, DC, is even more saturated, with 13.18 locations for every 100,000 people. Vermont is at the bottom of the list, with only five Starbucks outlets for a population of 621,000. The state's fierce opposition to chain stores (Wal-Mart in particular) is surely a factor here.

There may seem to be a Starbucks on every corner in Manhattan, but the chain's lower profile upstate upstate puts New York in 20th place.

Massachusetts is dead last in seat-belt use

Seat belts were used in a record 83 percent of car trips last year, according to estimates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But seat-belt use actually declined in Massachusetts by 1.9 points to 66.8 percent, putting us dead last, reports the Boston Globe.

The map below (click to make bigger) shows that we're in odd company. The Northeast in general has high seat-belt use, but Massachusetts and two neighbors (New Hampshire and Rhode Island) are more like Wyoming and Mississippi when it comes to reckless driving and riding. As the Globe story mentions, Massachusetts is not among the 28 states where police can stop drivers or riders for not wearing a seat belt.

Another outlier is Rhode Island, where seat belt use supposedly dropped by 7.1 percent. There was no decrease of more than 4 percent in any other state.

 

Massachusetts ranks 39th in government employees per capita

The Census Bureau today released its every-5-year tabulation of state and local government workers, and the Bay State is on the low end of the workforce scale. (The Census Bureau's press release is typically horrible in terms of providing links to complete data; go here to get your stats.)

In 2007, Massachusetts had the equivalent of 332,957 full-time people working for state and local government (299,320 full-time employees and 92,864 part-timers.) That added up to 516 employees for every 10,000 people living in the state, or well below most states. The main reason for our low ranking seemed to be our reliance on the private sector for "eds and meds," or educational degrees and medical treatment. Only 3 percent of our public employees worked in hospitals (compared with 6 percent nationwide), and 9 percent worked in higher education (compared with 12 percent nationwide). We also had a relatively light number of people working in corrections and prison departments (2.6 percent of all public workers vs. 4.5 percent nationwide). Compared with other states, a larger proportion of our workforce were employed in elementary and secondary schools, police departments, and fire departments.

Massachusetts ranks dead last in contested elections

Massachusetts, once known for its raucous politics, now ranks last in the nation in the percentage of voters with a choice as to who represents them in the State House. (Click here for data.) There are both Democratic and Republican candidates in only 27 28 of 160 state representative districts this year. (With contests in five seven of 40 Senate seats, we also have the lowest contested rate among the 15 states where the entire upper chamber is up for election.) NOTE: Two Republican candidates for Senate and one Democratic candidate for the House were added to the secretary of state's candidate list since the September primary. The new list includes candidates who won nomination through write-in or sticker campaigns. Even with the higher numbers, Massachusetts ranks last in competitiveness in both the Senate and House.

The 17 percent contested rate in the House is not only below the 21 percent in runner-up Georgia, it’s down from the 26 percent that the Bay State logged two years ago — and far below the 51 percent in 2004, when then-Gov. Mitt Romney made an unsuccessful attempt to increase the number of Republicans in the Legislature.

What determines whether a state has contested elections? As the map above shows (click it to enlarge), term limits don’t seem to be a deciding factor, since they haven’t brought about contested races in Arkansas and haven’t been necessary for a 100 percent contested rate in Minnesota. States in which one party controls the House by only a handful of votes (such as Michigan and Montana) generally have more spirited elections, but Pennsylvania has a mostly empty ballot even though its House is now split 102-101 in favor of the Democrats, and Utah has a nearly full slate despite the GOP’s 55-20 advantage there. (With a 7-to-1 advantage for the Democrats, the Massachusetts House is the most lopsided in the nation.)

Voter interest in one election may attract more candidates in the next: Minnesota and South Dakota were the only states in which more than 60 percent of the eligible population voted in 2006, and they have the highest contested rates for 2008. Arkansas and Georgia, meanwhile, had comparatively poor turnouts in 2006 and have few candidates this year. Unfortunately, Massachusetts is a glaring exception to this rule, as its high turnout in 2006 (55 percent vs. the national average of 48 percent) evidently didn’t encourage that many people to run for office this time around.

Below: John Cleese votes in Massachusetts.

Cleese: It's not much of a election, is it?

Palin: Finest in the country!

Cleese: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

Palin: Well, it's so clean, sir!

Cleese: It's certainly uncontaminated by candidates....