With the 2024 field of presidential candidates beginning to take shape, Americans can expect political debates to hit a new level of intensity— especially over crime. The issue emerged as a weak spot for Democrats in the 2022 midterms, raising the question of how the party planned to handle it moving forward. Yet despite some scattered pushback, Democrats have not compellingly repudiated the police and criminal-justice reforms that likely contributed to the Republican edge on the crime question. Expect Democrats to pivot to a bread-and-butter theme: gun control, which allows them to shift the blame for crime to conservative gun control opponents. This approach may have political benefits, but it is not a useful way of looking at crime. Red states’ murder problems are frequently concentrated in their blue cities. At the county level, Democratic- controlled areas suffer higher homicide rates and have seen bigger increases in homicide since 2020. More fundamentally, a mere correlation between partisan leanings and homicides tells us nothing about policy. It’s possible that one party represents constituencies with higher rates of violence, rather than supporting policies that actually cause or enable violence.
Click for Full Text!
