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Why Republican Governance Sucks, Part 5: Vote Democratic for Less Crime [1]

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Date: 2025-01-25

So far in this series, I’ve explored how Democratic governance is associated with what we might call the Ben Franklin trifecta: states led by Democrats are healthier (lower rates of maternal and infant deaths, greater longevity); wealthier (less poverty, better wages); and wiser (better schools, higher levels of education).

But there is much more to the well-being of a society. Are states with Democratic governance safer? Conservatives regularly stereotype Democratic-led cities and states as hellholes of violent crime, so different from places where Republicans are in charge. So let’s test that out with actual crime data.

Not just any type of even violent crime data will do. Some types of violent crime are known to be underreported (rape, assault); victims may never report to police or may decide later that they don’t want to press charges. Murder, however, is much harder to underreport, because dead bodies are frankly hard to ignore. As both the most extreme form of violent crime, and the least likely to go unreported, murder rates should give us the most reliable basis for comparison.

The figure at the top of this diary tells an interesting story about murder in the U.S. in general. Homicides rose rapidly in the 1960s, stayed elevated in the 70s to early 90s (violent crime in general peaked in the early 90s), then went into a decades-long decline. An upsurge occurred at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (under Trump), but then plummeted in the last couple of years of the Biden administration (even as the GOP, led by Trump’s nonstop lying, convinced most Americans that violent crime was increasing). Murder rates today are comparable to the mid-1960s.

So first murder went up, and stayed up, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike; then it came down, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. All of which suggests national politics and policy are not the strongest drivers of violent crime. But what do the state numbers say?

Let’s start with FBI data from 2022. Numbers are per 100,000 residents.

States with lowest homicide rates, 2022

Rhode Island 1.5 Iowa 1.7 New Hampshire 1.8 Utah 2.0 Hawaii 2.1 Massachusetts 2.1 Maine 2.2 Wyoming 2.6 Idaho 2.7 New Jersey 3.1

This gives us an interesting mix: 6 blue states (most in New England), 4 red (most in the West/Great Plains). This doesn’t cleave quite as clearly as the other social outcomes we’ve examined. What about the highest rates?

States with the highest homicide rates, 2022

Louisiana 16.2 New Mexico 12.2 South Carolina 11.2 Alabama 10.9 Arkansas 10.2 Missouri 10.1 Alaska 9.5 Tennessee 8.6 Maryland 8.5 Georgia 8.2

Hmmm — 8 red states (mostly in the South), 2 blue.

This suggests the possibility of strong regional patterns, which of course themselves may be tied to cultural attitudes that also influence political preferences. But at the higher end of the violence scale, red states definitely dominate.

One factor closely associated with homicide rates is urban vs. rural residence. It is definitely true that urban areas generally have higher crime rates. Partly this has to do with the nature of urban living itself (greater anonymity, more opportunity) rather than any cultural or political factor. Nevertheless, conservatives routinely denounce large cities led primarily by Democrats as hellholes of violence and danger. So let’s take the quintessential urban elite East Coast city: New York City. What’s the murder rate there? Surely it must be alarming? After all, NYC is full of immigrants — and racial/ethnic minorities — and LGBTQ+ people, all of which are very scary to MAGA America.

For 2019, per FBI statistics, the murder rate in New York was 3.4 per 100,000 people.

And if you’re looking back at the table of highest murder rates above, you can see that New York City is safer than every state on that top 10 list. In other words: walking around in New York City you are at less risk of violent death than you are in the states of LA, SC, AL, AR, MO, AK, TN, and GA (and NM and MD too, but that list is pretty tilted towards the red).

Of the 100 most populous cities in the U.S., for 2019, NYC was safer than much smaller red state cities like Mobile, AL; Indianapolis, IN; Tulsa, OK; Des Moines, IA; we could go on and on. Of course there are much more dangerous blue state cities too, like Baltimore, MD; Newark, NJ; Chicago, IL; and more. The point is, we don’t see much evidence that red states are consistently safer than blue states. In fact, the trend runs in the opposite direction. If tough-on-crime Republicans are doing such a great job of protecting their citizens, then why are you in more danger in Alabama or Louisiana or Tennessee than in almost any blue state, including those caricatured by MAGA as bastions of liberal misrule like California, Massachusetts, and New York?

We can add to our growing collection of pithy fact-based slogans: Stay safe! Vote Democratic for less crime!

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