Romney notes better job creation in states with Republican governors Mitt Romney observed this week that he was beginning to see a pattern: States with Republican governors are doing better in terms of job creation than those with Democrats at the helm. "I have to tell you," he told donors at a fundraiser in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, "I'm overwhelmingly optimistic about the future of jobs ... and income growth in America if we apply the policies that Republican governors are putting in practice right now." Romney has a point: Of the states whose unemployment rate is below the national average of 8.2%, most are run by Republican governors. However, this is also true: Of the states whose unemployment rate is above the national average, more are run by Republicans than Democrats. How's that? Simply put: There are more Republican governors (29) than Democratic governors (20), so Republicans can be on both sides of the unemployment divide. Romney made his remarks in the context of a political conundrum: How can he criticize President Obama's economic policies in battleground states where the economy is picking up? He recalled that when he was campaigning in Ohio, "some members of the media there said, 'You know, our unemployment rate here in Ohio is well below the national average, so how's your message going to connect here with people in Ohio?' And I did my best to respond to that, and then I went to Tennessee and the same question came up, and then Michigan -- and then I began to realize there's a pattern here," he said. And that is, in states that have Republican governors, people who are conservative, who are holding down taxes, things are going pretty well. This general region, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Ohio, in Indiana, I was down in Tennessee, same thing there: Republican governors, holding down taxes, holding down spending, taking action that is job friendly and business friendly, are seeing jobs come back. It would take a great deal of analysis to determine how individual state policies are affecting the unemployment rate. Without doing that, this much can be said: Most of the states with the very lowest unemployment rates --seven of the lowest 10 -- are run by Republican governors. These tend to be lightly populated, rural states (North Dakota, Nebraska and South Dakota top the list) whose economies may not be subject to the same pressures as, say, California or New York. Still, Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota can afford to gloat a bit over his state's 3% jobless rate, beaten into submission by an oil boom. That is well below the level the government considers to be "full employment." Overall, of the states whose unemployment rate was below the national average in May, the last month for which figures are available, 21 have Republican governors and 13 have Democratic governors. It is also true, however, that seven of the 14 states that were above the national average are run by Republican governors, including Brian Sandoval of Nevada, whose state has the second lowest tax burden in the country but tops the national unemployment list with a rate of 11.6%. Six of the 14 above-average states are run by Democrats, including California's Jerry Brown. The fact there are far more states with below-average than above-average unemployment rates may hint at one of the dynamics in play: The highest jobless rates tend to be in large urban states, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, California and Florida. Of those six states, three are run by Republicans and three by Democrats. They also tend to be among the states with the highest per capita incomes, despite their high unemployment. If some of these numbers don't quite add up, one reason is because Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is an independent -- a former Republican who now is one of the co-chairs of President Obama's reelection campaign. His state has the second highest unemployment rate, 11%. And two states --Kentucky (D) and Arizona (R) -- precisely match the national average.