Party Control and Social Problems

[JohnStOnge]

I realize that my writing about it won't make people understand the situation. But it should be noted that, as of the latest year for which homicide rate data are available, 2020, States completely controlled by Republicans (Governor and both houses Republican) have higher homicide rates than States completely controlled by Democrats (Governor and both houses Democrat0 do. You can see the 2020 homicide rates at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosm ... micide.htm. You can identify States such that one Party is totally in charge by looking at https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_compos ... #Trifectas . At the page where you can see which Party is in charge by State, you an tell from the "Year of last status change" column that Montana just changed to all Republican control in 2021, so I'm not counting Montana as being in either group.

The average homicide rate, homicides per 100,000 population, for the 22 States totally controlled by Republicans is 8.3 and that for 14 States totally controlled by Democrats is 5.8. There is 92% confidence that the difference is not by chance. Not the 95% we'd like to see by convention. But a fairly high confidence level.

Another way to look at it is to combine the populations and the total numbers of homicides for the two groups and calculate overall rates for the combined populations. When you do that, you will find that the overall combined population of States where Republicans are in total control has an 8.6 per 100,000 homicide rate while that for the overall combined population of States where Democrats are in total control is 5.8.

The point is this: Believing that Republicans are better on the crime issue is an extremely questionable belief.

And yes I know that is just one crime. But do you really believe looking at more categories of crime is going to change the picture? It won't. This thing where Republicans claim Republican control means less crime is a total myth.

[BDKJMU]

I realize that my writing about it won't make people understand the situation. But it should be noted that, as of the latest year for which homicide rate data are available, 2020, States completely controlled by Republicans (Governor and both houses Republican) have higher homicide rates than States completely controlled by Democrats (Governor and both houses Democrat0 do. You can see the 2020 homicide rates at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosm ... micide.htm. You can identify States such that one Party is totally in charge by looking at https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_compos ... #Trifectas . At the page where you can see which Party is in charge by State, you an tell from the "Year of last status change" column that Montana just changed to all Republican control in 2021, so I'm not counting Montana as being in either group.

The average homicide rate, homicides per 100,000 population, for the 22 States totally controlled by Republicans is 8.3 and that for 14 States totally controlled by Democrats is 5.8. There is 92% confidence that the difference is not by chance. Not the 95% we'd like to see by convention. But a fairly high confidence level.

Another way to look at it is to combine the populations and the total numbers of homicides for the two groups and calculate overall rates for the combined populations. When you do that, you will find that the overall combined population of States where Republicans are in total control has an 8.6 per 100,000 homicide rate while that for the overall combined population of States where Democrats are in total control is 5.8.

The point is this: Believing that Republicans are better on the crime issue is an extremely questionable belief.

And yes I know that is just one crime. But do you really believe looking at more categories of crime is going to change the picture? It won't. This thing where Republicans claim Republican control means less crime is a total myth.

Looking at states: = TOTAL FAIL.

Have to look at cities.

[BDKJMU]

Donks:
“Crime isn’t that bad.”. Didn’t work.
“Crime is worse in southern states”. Didn’t work.
“If you’re concerned about crime, well you’re a racist”. Not working.

[Winterborn]

I realize that my writing about it won't make people understand the situation. But it should be noted that, as of the latest year for which homicide rate data are available, 2020, States completely controlled by Republicans (Governor and both houses Republican) have higher homicide rates than States completely controlled by Democrats (Governor and both houses Democrat0 do. You can see the 2020 homicide rates at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosm ... micide.htm. You can identify States such that one Party is totally in charge by looking at https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_compos ... #Trifectas . At the page where you can see which Party is in charge by State, you an tell from the "Year of last status change" column that Montana just changed to all Republican control in 2021, so I'm not counting Montana as being in either group.

The average homicide rate, homicides per 100,000 population, for the 22 States totally controlled by Republicans is 8.3 and that for 14 States totally controlled by Democrats is 5.8. There is 92% confidence that the difference is not by chance. Not the 95% we'd like to see by convention. But a fairly high confidence level.

Another way to look at it is to combine the populations and the total numbers of homicides for the two groups and calculate overall rates for the combined populations. When you do that, you will find that the overall combined population of States where Republicans are in total control has an 8.6 per 100,000 homicide rate while that for the overall combined population of States where Democrats are in total control is 5.8.

The point is this: Believing that Republicans are better on the crime issue is an extremely questionable belief.

And yes I know that is just one crime. But do you really believe looking at more categories of crime is going to change the picture? It won't. This thing where Republicans claim Republican control means less crime is a total myth.

Lazar's have less focus than you do on a topic.

[JohnStOnge]

I realize that my writing about it won't make people understand the situation. But it should be noted that, as of the latest year for which homicide rate data are available, 2020, States completely controlled by Republicans (Governor and both houses Republican) have higher homicide rates than States completely controlled by Democrats (Governor and both houses Democrat0 do. You can see the 2020 homicide rates at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosm ... micide.htm. You can identify States such that one Party is totally in charge by looking at https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_compos ... #Trifectas . At the page where you can see which Party is in charge by State, you an tell from the "Year of last status change" column that Montana just changed to all Republican control in 2021, so I'm not counting Montana as being in either group.

The average homicide rate, homicides per 100,000 population, for the 22 States totally controlled by Republicans is 8.3 and that for 14 States totally controlled by Democrats is 5.8. There is 92% confidence that the difference is not by chance. Not the 95% we'd like to see by convention. But a fairly high confidence level.

Another way to look at it is to combine the populations and the total numbers of homicides for the two groups and calculate overall rates for the combined populations. When you do that, you will find that the overall combined population of States where Republicans are in total control has an 8.6 per 100,000 homicide rate while that for the overall combined population of States where Democrats are in total control is 5.8.

The point is this: Believing that Republicans are better on the crime issue is an extremely questionable belief.

And yes I know that is just one crime. But do you really believe looking at more categories of crime is going to change the picture? It won't. This thing where Republicans claim Republican control means less crime is a total myth.

Looking at states: = TOTAL FAIL.

Have to look at cities.

No. We have Republicans running for office right now acting like crime will go down if people do things like vote for Republicans in the House and Senate, Republicans for Governor, etc. There is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that Republicans having control of things like that would mean less crime.

As far as cities go: Larger cities tend to have high percentages of minority populations and minority populations tend to be associated with higher crime rates. They also tend to elect Democrats. But those cities are within States and Republicans are telling you that if you elect Republicans to offices in the US House, US Senate, and Governor you can expect less crime. Again: There is absolutely no evidence to support that expectation.

There are few Republican mayors among the largest cities. There are only two among the 30 largest cities (Jacksonville and Forth Worth). i guess at some point i could try to run the numbers on all the largest cities. But, for what it's worth, Fort Worth and Jacksonville have higher homicide rates (8.02 and 12.18) than the two largest cities in the country do (New York at 3.39 and Los Angeles at 7.01). Yes, I can find other cities with much higher rates. Like the top rate is a a whopping 66.07 (St. Louis). But i doubt there is evidence to say that cities in general would have lower crime rates if Republicans were in charge of them.

Either way, again, Republicans are acting like the increase in crime is because Democrats are in control. Here is another indication that such an inference is very questionable: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/U ... icide-rate .

What you see there is that the largest percent increase in national homicide rate during 1990 through 2020 came during 2020. Whatever happened in 2021 and 2022, any trend towards increasing homicide rate clearly started while a Republican was President and Republicans were in control of the Senate. The whole Republican thing on Democrats as the cause of crime rate increase is a false narrative. It's a successful narrative politically. But it's false.