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Blue Counties Have a Murder Problem

Posted on Monday, October 23, 2023
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by Outside Contributor
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Homicide rates in the United States have risen in recent years, reaching 6.81 homicides per 100,000 people in 2021. Many commentators have opined on what could explain the rise in crime.

In a recent report, Jim Kessler and Kylie Murdock of the Third Way think tank claim that “red” states have had higher homicide rates than “blue” states over the past 20 years. This Issue Brief takes a closer look at this question and finds a number of critical flaws in the Third Way report. Correcting for these flaws produces the exact opposite conclusion.

Failure to Analyze Homicide Data Across Localities

The Third Way authors claim that there is a difference between the murder rates in “red” states and “blue” states. Averaging these rates between the years 2014 and 2020 across states that voted for Donald Trump during the 2020 election yields an aggregate homicide rate of 6.48 per 100,000 people, while averaging across states that voted for Joe Biden yields a homicide rate of 4.83 per 100,000 people.

However, drawing conclusions from state-level homicide data in such a manner is flawed, as each state consists of a combination of federal, state, county, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as prosecutors with different approaches to law enforcement often based on highly divergent political beliefs. Violations of state law are prosecuted largely at the county or city level and, thus, amalgamating data across such units neglects important variation in these different approaches.

Looking at homicide rates by county, states show skewed distributions with many counties having little or no homicides, and a handful of counties with excessively high homicide rates. Thus, state homicide rates can be heavily influenced by a few counties. When those counties have different politics from the rest of the state, it can flip the conclusion about the association between political identifications and homicides.

As a result, after averaging homicide rates across counties during the same time horizon, a markedly different story from the Third Way’s narrative emerges. Averaging across all counties that voted for Donald Trump yields an aggregate homicide rate of 4.06 per 100,000 people, while averaging across counties that voted for Joe Biden yields a homicide rate of 6.52 per 100,000 people. These statistics are presented in Chart 1.

 

Failure to Consider Changing Electoral Results

Third Way held “red” states and “blue” states constant in terms of how they voted in the 2020 presidential election. This approach is fundamentally flawed because electoral sentiment changed across the time period used for the study. For example, although President Biden won Arizona in 2020, the previous Democrat who won the state was Bill Clinton in 1996. Similarly, Donald Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, despite the fact that Barack Obama had won the state in 2008 and 2012.

We repeated Third Way’s estimate of homicide rates over time but corrected for changes in voting behavior. Observations of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps data show averages over a period of six years. The most recent dataset provides homicide rates from 2014 to 2020. We analyzed this, and analogous, time periods going back to 2002 to 2008 in terms of the respective presidential elections corresponding to each time period, using election data compiled by MIT Election labs. These results are presented in Chart 2.

While red states consistently have had higher homicide rates than blue states, blue counties have consistently had higher homicide rates than red counties, as shown in Chart 2. Specifically, homicide rates in red states (as corrected) ranged from 5.57 per 100,000 people between 2002 and 2008 to 6.33 per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2020, while in blue states (as corrected) these rates ranged from 5.14 per 100,000 people between 2002 and 2008 to 4.49 per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2020. Homicide rates in red counties, on the other hand, ranged from 3.90 per 100,000 people between 2002 and 2008 to 4.16 per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2020, while in blue counties these rates varied from 7.35 per 100,000 people between 2002 and 2008 to 6.76 per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2020.

Conclusion

Statistical analysis is useful for analyzing data to inform public policy. It is crucial, however, to analyze data carefully while taking into account critical factors influencing trends of interest. Proper analysis of the question posed by the Third Way suggests that the nation has a blue county murder problem that has persisted for the past 20 years.

Kevin Dayaratna, PhD, is Chief Statistician, Data Scientist, and Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. Alexander Gage is a former Research Assistant for Economic Policy in the Center for Data Analysis.

Reprinted with Permission from The Heritage Foundation – By Kevin Dayaratna & Alexander Gage

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Rob citizenship
Rob citizenship
11 months ago

This article is of importance – and I recognize the value of the work Kevin Dayaratna and Alexander Gage put into it – this is a high quality report and should be appreciated by anyone interested in the truth pertaining to the crime situation . Well Done ! In the 1970’s I became interested in Public Health and had a book entitled ” The Handbook of Community Health ” by Murray Grant. I remember what Dr. Grant wrote about public health statistics – it was something that I thought was significant – he said that it was good to keep in mind that public health statistics are a matter of dealing with probabilities not certainties. So, I think of the last paragraph in this article as being an indicator of what is at the root of any stastical study – the idea that critical factors influencing trends of interest need to be taken into account. Whether it involves crime or public health or how many apples will stay on the tree ’til ripe, as opposed to falling off the tree – statistics – statistical analysis, is a subject of great importance and something that I do believe is intellectually stimulating considering the knowledge acquired .

J. FARLEY
J. FARLEY
11 months ago

The murder rate in Blue Cities is the result of over restrictive gun Laws, Laws that restrict Law-Abiding citizens from owning or restrict the Constitutional Rights, all the while Criminals are well armed because most don’t get their guns legally in the first place.
A business that puts a sign in the window that states — No Firearms Allowed, is putting their clients at risk, it tells the criminal that the place is full of un-Armend Law Abiding Citizens, I will not do business with those companies.
The other problem is punishment, or the lack thereof, instead of lowing the punishment for crime we need to make it harsher, and we need to take away their money source, the sale of Drugs, and for the major illegal drug makers we need to make it a death penalty for the manufactory and distribution of drugs.
God Bless America!

anna hubert
anna hubert
11 months ago

Blue states blue counties blue cities Mayors and DAs of most are black Is there a connection?

Randall L. Beatty
Randall L. Beatty
11 months ago

Those cities cater to those that brake the law. They are also all in to defund the police or down size the number of police now you have nothing but corruption, murders are up all over the state good honest people have no say so, sad what some of the blue states have become.

Tom
Tom
11 months ago

The “Third Way”, is in reality, the left’s way.

Denise
Denise
11 months ago

All the better to reduce the population by deliberately disarming the people. Anyone so naive as to believe the left is concerned about citizen safety… are foolish at best. Nations for centuries have been disarmed by tyrants. Add to that the deliberately weakened “criminal justice system” over at least the last 3 decades. Sorry to sound like a broken record (not)…do not forget what happened at Waco, Texas under the “Hillary Clinton” regime (sic)…almost 86 AMERICAN men, women and children slaughtered by “law”, military, ATF (better known as jack booted thugs) and others. Military vehicles of war were used to insert CS gas into the people’s building where moms and children were huddled in the basement. Choppers shooting tracers into the top of the building; 51 days of threats, jeeps being driven around the building with a loud speaker blaring the screams of rabbits being skinned alive and on and on (can we say torture?)….supposedly, carefully “edited” by the lamestream who nightly cheered on the carnage…was that there were “thousands of guns and millions of rounds of ammo.” The building was ultimately reduced to ashes. We watched that horror in disbelief! Also probably when the “FBI” or as some know it; Federal Bureau of Intimidation…started the road to weaponization. Oh, CS gas was what Hitler the monster used on the Jewish people at Auschwitz. The Geneva Convention outlawed CS gas as…”too cruel for warfare”. Can’t help but wonder how our present regime intends to “reduce the population”…accept maybe for more “new” and exciting covid vaccines…?
Oh, Bill Clinton was “impeached” (can we say monkey trial?) for…messing with an intern in the oval office…not mass murder. Could it be that the Clinton regime was the first salvo over America’s bow? The “media” was so “good” at genuflecting.
Oh, yeah, we watched this nightmare for 51 nights in disbelief, kind of like a moth lured to the flame…

TommyD
TommyD
11 months ago

We know that the left skews everything to fit their narrative. We can no longer trust anything they put out as “fact”. Even polls across America are no longer trustworthy at all. We have seen many “polls” put out with information that the left “wants” to be true, thinking it will influence people, and unfortunately it does just that many times. Yet, there is no penalty for releasing information that is obviously untrue because they can claim that those were their results, in a limited sample size. Polling has lost its usefulness and integrity, just like everything else the left touches.

FedUp
FedUp
11 months ago

Who needs statistics. You can arrive at the same conclusion by looking at the annual total homicides in democrat run cities versus republican run cities.

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
11 months ago

Crime statistics are the one thing Democrats do not apply identity politics to. Approximately 25% of the population is committing 70-80% of the violent crime and the problem is everyone is afraid to point this out. Its not poverty or privilege but a culture of violence and lawlessness behind it. Its not “racist cops” black men in big cities need to fear, its other black men! [If thus is all racist, sorry, but it doesn’t make it less TRUE!]

Joanne4justice
Joanne4justice
11 months ago

Blue counties, blue states, blue government/ judicial enforcement are barriers to MAGA!!!

S Ga
S Ga
11 months ago

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at a roundtable with business and labor leaders, Friday, November 18, 2022, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)
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