It’s no big mystery why so many Americans believe the crime rate is getting worse: that’s exactly what Republicans keep telling the public to believe.
For example, a few months ago, Representative Nancy Mace posted a video online that presented a rather terrifying vision of modern life in the United States. The South Carolina Republican’s video was accompanied by a clear text: “Since Joe Biden took office, crime in our country has skyrocketed.”
That was and is not true. In fact, CNN reported this week on new statistics from the FBI showing a 15% decline in violent crime in the first months of 2024.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a written statement that the latest data “makes it clear that last year’s historic decline in violent crime continues.”
The reference to last year was especially notable because of the encouraging results from 2023. For example, NBC News reported in March “that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying the widespread perception that crime is rising. .”
All of this, of course, follows a dramatic spike in homicides in 2020 – the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
In terms of the political implications of the recent progress, I’m reminded again of a sentence from a recent Axios report that struck me: “Opinion polls show crime is a top priority ahead of the 2024 elections – and it’s an issue where Republicans regularly take the lead over Democrats. But falling murder rates could take away the Republican Party’s crucial advantage.”
That’s true; It could be. That said, it’s hard to be confident about that shall.
Prominent Republican voices probably know that crime rates are falling. That doesn’t seem to stop them from telling the public the opposite of the truth, operating on the assumption that many voters will simply believe the untruths and never hear about actual crime data.
In the abstract, political campaigns have long followed a set of intuitive rules. Those who want to win tend to identify their rivals’ weaknesses and focus on them. Likewise, candidates have also taken care to learn about their enemies’ strengths and tried to steer their races away from those issues.
But the crime rates provide a good example of how contemporary Republican politics rejects the intuitive rules for a different model. To the extent that reality still makes sense, Biden has a compelling story to tell: Crime rates, especially homicide rates, spiked toward the end of his Republican predecessor’s term. Under the leadership of the incumbent Democratic president, Americans are now safer.
Common sense might suggest that Republican officials would see the news and try to steer the public conversation away from this strong point for Biden. But it turns out they find it much easier to effectively say, “Why don’t we just make stuff up and wait for the public to buy it?”
Yes, the evidence could pose a problem for Republicans as the election season progresses, but given the party’s brazenness, cynicism, and complete indifference to the data, it seems likely that too many Republican voices will simply ignore the evidence and will continue to lie.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
