A commenter recently asserted that Blue States provide “better government services” than Red States. That sounds plausible. Blue States spend more therefore they must provide better services, right?
No.
Spending is not performance. Condition is not adequacy. Raw outcomes are not system contribution. If you want to measure “best services,” you need to define what “best” means. I built a framework to do exactly that.
My organizing principle is simple: a state should be judged on whether it delivers services commensurate with the operational demands it actually faces not on what it spends or on how difficult its job is. On whether it does the job.
What Changes When You Measure It Properly
The State Service Performance Index (SSPI) looks at four domains:
- Infrastructure (traffic-weighted)
- Education (poverty/ELL-adjusted)
- Public safety (crime-load-weighted)
- Health (need-weighted)
Then it applies a fiscal sustainability modifier because a service level you cannot afford is not a real service level. When you do that, the partisan narrative dissolves.
Midwest: Illinois vs Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa
Illinois underperforms its neighbors in infrastructure even after accounting for Chicago’s enormous traffic load. The problem is not that Illinois has a harder job. The problem is that it is not meeting the job fully.
Education is more interesting. Once student poverty and English-learner burden are accounted for, Illinois performs better than raw NAEP rankings suggest. Iowa’s edge narrows once its lighter demographic burden is accounted for.
Public safety is weaker in Illinois even after crime-load adjustment.
Then comes the fiscal adjustment and Illinois collapses. Pension underfunding and structural imbalance materially reduce its composite score.
The lesson is not ideological. It is structural: Illinois’ problems are institutional and fiscal.
The West: California vs Arizona, Nevada, Utah
This case is more revealing because it upsets simple narratives. California’s raw NAEP rankings look terrible. Once you account for the largest English-learner burden in the country, the picture changes. California’s schools add more than raw scores suggest. That doesn’t make them excellent. It does mean the usual talking point is statistically crude.
Arizona, by contrast, does not improve much under burden adjustment. Its lower education scores reflect genuine system underperformance, not demographic distortion.
Utah performs strongly across most domains and remains strong under both efficiency and equity weighting scenarios. Some of that is demographic windfall (young population). But its nearly fully funded pension system is not a demographic accident. That is institutional discipline.
Nevada’s tourism economy complicates measurement because millions of visitors generate service demand not reflected in resident statistics. That volatility shows up in its fiscal score.
Again: there is no clean partisan story.
The Real Finding
Blue States do not automatically provide better services; Red States do not automatically provide worse services.
What matters is:
- Are infrastructure systems aligned with actual traffic demand?
- Are schools adding value relative to student burden?
- Is public safety performance strong relative to crime load?
- Can the state sustain what it promises?
Is health delivery strong relative to clinical need?
When you measure those things, the rankings are mixed. Some Red States perform strongly (Utah, Iowa). Some Blue States show real strengths (California education gains). Some Blue States are dragged down by fiscal mismanagement (Illinois). Some Red States show genuine system deficits (Arizona education).
The partisan label is not the independent variable. Institutional structure is.
The Hard Truth
Many political arguments rely on raw statistics because raw statistics are easy: raw NAEP, raw road grades, raw crime rates. But raw metrics conflate composition with contribution.
If a state has more poverty, more immigrants, more freight traffic, more density that does not excuse failure. But neither does it justify simplistic comparisons. The only serious question is: given the demands you face, are you doing the job?
That is measurable. When you start measuring, the slogans fade.
I have included details of my State Service Performance Index on separate pages here. I don’t pretend it’s perfect but at least it’s a best effort.
