As voters prepare to go to the polls in tightly contested manufacturing states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a new study is stark reminder about which party built and is committed to sustaining America's industrial heartland. The new analysis shows Democratic presidents far outperform their Republican counterparts in producing manufacturing jobs. Of course, that finding shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, as the record shows, measured by job creation, employment growth, stock market performance or just about any other indicator, the U.S. economy for three generations has done much better with Democrats in the White House.

The new study jointly performed by Pennsylvania's Keystone Research Center (KRC) and the Iowa Policy Project (IPP) found that "Democratic administrations have added an average of between 160,000 and 250,000 manufacturing jobs each year, while Republican ones have lost manufacturing jobs at about the same rate." As their interactive tools by state and presidential administration show:

Across nine Republican terms, U.S. manufacturing jobs fell 7.3 million to 9 million, depending on method [of analysis]. Across seven Democratic terms, manufacturing employment rose by 5.4 million to 7 million.

While KRC Executive Director Dr.Stephen Herzenberg acknowledged "How much luck or policy differences explain these results is open to debate and further research," he also pointed out that "as we've been reminded by the auto industry rescue of 2009, policy choices matter when it comes to building a stronger manufacturing sector." A stronger manufacturing sector, that is, not just in the industrial Midwest but across the nation:

In the Northeast, about 4 million manufacturing jobs were lost in Republican administrations and nearly 900,000 gained in Democratic.
In the Midwest, about 3.2 million manufacturing jobs were lost in Republican administrations and about 2 million created in Democratic.
In the South, about 925,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in Republican administrations and about 2.1 million manufacturing jobs created in Democratic.
In the West, about 380,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in Republican administrations and about 1.55 million jobs created in Democratic.

Thanks in part to President Obama's rescue of the U.S. industry (which saved over a million jobs), the 2009 stimulus (which the CBO concluded at its peak added 3.3 million jobs, cut unemployment by as much as 1.8 percent and boosted GDP by up to 4.1 percent) and other measures designed to double U.S. exports, the American manufacturing sector is rebounding from its shocking contraction of the Bush years. According to a recent forecast by the Boston Consulting Group, the U.S. economy fueled by increasing productivity and lower U.S. energy prices could add up to five million new manufacturing jobs by 2020.
As it turns out, the KRC/IPP research is just the latest confirmation that Democratic presidents are best for job creation. In May, Bloomberg News showed that private sector payrolls increase more with Democrats in the White House. (Ironically, this is the first recession in 40 years in which the total federal, state and local government workforce contracted.) As Bloomberg explained:

Since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures...Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy's inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans.

There's also no shortage of studies to show that stock market returns are much higher under Democratic leadership. As Bloomberg News similarly documented in February, Barack Obama has been no exception:

With Election Day less than three weeks away, voters worried about the pace of the recovery from the Bush recession will decide whether past performance is a guarantee of future results. But as this new data on manufacturing job creation once again suggests, President Harry Truman was surely right when he said, "If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.