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This paper seeks to identify the causal effect of governor party affiliation on state tax burden and tax legislation from 1975-2000. This helps shed light on whether policy making by different political parties diverge or converge. We employ parametric and nonparametric regression discontinuity approaches. Our results indicate that when a state has a closely elected Democratic governor, the state has a significantly higher total tax burden than it would have had if the Republican candidate would have won inste