Why Do So Many Voters Think Republicans Are Better on Crime?

The Facts Tell a Different Story

One of the reasons Republican candidates seem to be doing well during this midterm election cycle is that voters are concerned about rising crime. For reasons not borne out by historical facts, many voters seem to think Republicans are better on this issue. The results are, at best, mixed, but Republicans are definitely not the winners.

It’s important to point out that the United States has the highest crime rate of any industrialized nation: 6.52 offenses per 100,000 people. Next after that is — ready for this? — Canada, with a rate of only 1.97 per 100,000. The obvious correlation is that Canada and our European allies do not have our obsession with guns, but Republicans don’t want to talk about gun control as a way to fight crime.

If you look at the last fifty years, our lowest crime rate was between 2010 and 2015, when violent crime was down 47% and property crime was down 68% from their highest rates. Guess who was president? And yet, nobody argues that Obama was tough on crime. It’s also worth noting that during that time, America’s three largest cities had Democratic mayors.

When crime is bad, if a Republican is the president, Republicans will blame it on the local Democratic leaders. Such was the case in the late ’80s and early ’90s when the violent crime rate was through the roof — today’s post-pandemic crime wave still pales in comparison. Then, too, there was another cause that was largely seen as the reason behind the crime statistics: the so-called crack epidemic. That crime wave happened after eight years of Reagan and throughout Bush Sr.’s term and yet few argued that they were soft on crime.

That crime wave paved the way for the election of Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York (even though his predecessor, David Dinkins, was given little credit for the homicide dropping 12% from 1990–93 on his watch and for expanding the police department by 25%, which included increases in neighborhood patrols) and, on the federal level, by President Bill Clinton, who passed the 1994 Crime Bill and the Brady Bill.

Now, both Giuliani (Republican) and Clinton (Democrat) experienced the downside of their policies later. Police shootings of unarmed civilians grew under Giuliani’s tenure, and Clinton’s Crime Bill was later seen as a major contribution to the mass incarceration crisis, when young people (disproportionately affecting people of color) were imprisoned for minor offenses like possession of marijuana. Civil rights issues plagued both leaders.

As for the Brady Bill, studies have shown that the waiting period for purchasing guns significantly reduced gun deaths. However, when Congress should have re-ratified the bill ten years later, the Bush Jr. administration let it lapse. Was Bush, therefore, soft on crime?

In a recent debate between gubernatorial candidates in super-red Oklahoma, Democratic challenger Joy Hofmeister correctly pointed out that under the leadership of incumbent Republican Kevin Stitt, the crime rate, per capita, is higher in Oklahoma than that in California and New York. Take that, Republican voters!

In fact, right now the highest violent crime rate, per capita, is in red Alaska and purple New Mexico.

I’ve included a second graph that shows mass shooting statistics, a portion of the violent crime statistic. You can see that there is an uptick after 2004 when the Brady Bill lapsed. However, it climbs during the Obama years after 2012 and really spikes in the years 2017–2019 when Trump was president. It’s not a stretch to ask if his hate-spewed rhetoric contributed to the lone-wolf mass shootings. They went down during the lockdown of 2020, but both mass shootings and violent crime overall have risen again in the last two years. The pandemic and the political climate have been factors but, as I stated previously, the current crime wave still dwarfs the one in the late ’80s and early ‘90s.

My point is this: No party can accurately claim that they are better on crime.

I myself was a victim of violent crime when I lived in New York in the early ’90s. I commend law enforcement for quickly apprehending the suspect in that case. But I never looked back and blamed a politician — local, state, or federal — for what happened.

Yes, crime should be an issue we look at when we cast our votes, and we should ask what candidates have done or are planning to do to combat it.

But don’t just pull the level for a Republican because they talk about toughness. There is no evidence that they are actually better on crime.