Partisanship Determines What Americans Believe About Crime
Polling data released this week shows that Americans’ views on nationwide crime rates have gotten closer to reflecting reality. But it’s less likely that we’re coming to our senses than that partisanship is skewing the data in a more accurate direction than usual.
“Americans’ perceptions of crime in the U.S. have improved,” writes Megan Brenan at Gallup, “with the percentage saying national crime has increased over the past year falling by 13 points, to 64%.” The number of respondents saying crime in the U.S. was “extremely” or “very serious” also dropped 7 points, to 56 percent, over the last year.
At first glance, this is good news, in that it increasingly reflects reality.
“Both the FBI and BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics] data show dramatic declines in U.S. violent and property crime rates since the early 1990s, when crime spiked across much of the nation,” John Gramlich of Pew Research wrote in April 2024. “Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022” while property crime fell 59 percent over the same period. The BJS statistics were even more impressive, Gramlich found, writing that “the U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between 1993 and 2022.”
And yet people don’t seem to believe the good news. “In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period,” Gramlich added. Indeed, according to a graph on the latest Gallup release, the last year in which fewer than 60 percent of respondents—53 percent—said crime had risen over the previous year, was 2004.
While the newest Gallup survey continues that trend, in which a clear majority of people still think crime is on the rise, it also indicates that the numbers are moving in the right direction. But unfortunately, it’s unlikely that people’s perceptions are simply coming into line with reality.
As Gallup’s Brenan notes, partisanship seems to play the biggest role in the decline. “The October poll finds that partisans hold sharply differing views of the incidence of crime in the U.S., with Democrats’ much more positive perceptio
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