> A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.
no matter how much you prepare it by straw-manning that the other side blames Democratic leadership for the same thing.
If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.
Why would they control for domestic violence or street crime at all? This piece is strictly talking about the rate of murders. Your proposal is not relevant to this discussion.
If anything, because urban areas have a higher population density, one would expect them to have a higher rate of murder per capita, but shockingly, they don't.
Dismissing this entire argument simply because "rural/urban" is quite frankly, deceitful and serves to help no one.
I think this is the part that is causing the malfunction. None of the traditional arguments work against this simple data set.
Why would this be shocking? The measure is per capita. I can see why it could lead to higher numbers within a small geographic area. But Why would density lead to higher murder rate?
That said, it would be much better if they actually got into the causes or contributors, like the various socioeconomic factors that correlate with murder/crime.
It’s authored by a centrist Democratic think tank and it has a political agenda: to spur new messaging from Dem officials to counter the soft-on-crime narratives in the media, a perennial issue for Democratic politicians in the United States.
When existing political talking points include "liberal ideas are causing crime to rise" then an article like this one is also a valid thing to look at.
Maybe not a great example (not sure the exact argument you're going for) given the murder rate in Baltimore is about 55 and the rate in Wyoming is about 1. I also question if socioeconomic factors are really that similar between the two. A better comparison might be city rates vs the state rate for the stare they are in, like Baltimore at 55 vs MD at 9 (even better if you could exclude Baltimore from the MD stats).
Does it obscure that fact? Maybe those facts are the underlying reason for some of the other ills.
> Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.
This makes little sense as the places with more density are more likely to vote Democratic. Yet, this data shows us that (some) more rural states have higher murder rates.
All these states also have democrats in their state legislature. If we wanted to play this political game most the murders would be come from democrat areas which are the larger population centers aka cities.
I could flip this and point to more burglary per capita in rural areas which tend to be republican areas. Yet for this example its not because they are republicans, but in rural areas you tend have more unattended buildings.
Crime varies a lot based off location. Lets not try to politize these things.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Wouldn't "n" be number of murders?
> Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year.
It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
> Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
What if the two of them are linked? If a handful of states follow the same political ideology, and also share an outsized poverty and murder rate it is worth analyzing if those same policies have an impact.
No. I'm not disputing the murder rates. Those are probably very accurate for that year. I'm disputing the claim that red states have a murder problem based on one year of information.
> It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
Not equally. Given the information they used, it is entirely plausible that the murder rate did not increase more in blue states because, in general, they weren't allowed to go outside unlike, say, Florida. To be clear, this is not "proof" that an ideology is better. This is a temporary measure that could lead to longer term issues.
> What if the two of them are linked?
That's what I'm saying. This article is claiming a link without actually analyzing the impact. You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.
For the sections on murder rates (not their change), n is the population. These sections make up the majority of the article. For the section on year-to-year changes, those are comparisons of two populations (each with n being that year's population count). There's no way sampling error would have a noticeable effect on the rates for states or major cities. Instead, those changes are caused by things a model should account for. TFA doesn't present a model, because that's not the point.
>"6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences.
I think that's the point of TFA.
>What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
TFA's conclusion is the narrative of murder rates increasing because of Democratic political leaders doesn't jive with reality. The title is provocative, but and it takes an unnecessary jab with, "A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates."
But you're really just agreeing with the article.
I'm glad nobody claimed this, because it wouldn't make any sense. Back in reality, do you have any ideas on the variables or just want to throw cold water on the entire discussion because it challenges your assumptions?
In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). It is disingenuous to switch between cities and states like this when trying to assign political causes.
Not really. Most of us understand the difference between states and cities. They were trying to head off the argument that you ended up making anyways.
> In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa).
Jacksonville has a Republican mayor and a higher murder rate than Tulsa (according to this report), so it appears someone's data is off.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murd...
Also if you look at the list of cities in the bottom left of my link, a hilarious outlier is the town of Tremonton. Tremonton literally had its only murder in 50 years but since the population of the town is so small it works out to a homicide rate comparable to Costa Rica or Uruguay for the year.
This could easily skew the numbers per capita for a state that does not have population more broadly spread out in its borders.
Crime varies a lot based off location. For example burgarly per capita last I checked was more common in rural areas. This make sense since more unattended buildings and such.
State level is far to coarse, and also why the political spin.
