I think this is exactly the opposite of the takeaway. Republicans have been promoting the idea that Democrats are weak on crime and their city's are overrun with murders. They have been running on this message since at least Reagan in the 80s. This challenges that existing position with actual data about states.
It might not be as deep as you like, but it certainly challenges the existing narrative (that's why you see so many people upset in the comments).
So yeah, it's not as deep as I'd like. It seems like there's not much actual information in the article other than 80% of the top 10 states for murder rate voted for Trump, which I don't find useful or actionable.
If they aren't questioning their assumptions, then they are engaging on the wrin
> Even the basic premise of the article has been essentially strawmaned - comparing states to cities
It doesn't really compare cities to states. It mentions how cities are in states, which we know. It is about how Republicans use crime in cities as a hammer to hit Democratic policies and this data shows that narrative might not reflect reality.
> look at the socioeconomic factors at play in the various locations, etc.
These are also a function of government in some way, so it's hard to add this to the analysis without biasing the data.
I guess it depends on what you mean by actionable. If by actionable, you mean "changing my vote won't necessarily have an impact on the murder rate", I'd very much agree with you. However, I'd say it's actionable as in, "I should stop accepting and/or repeating a false narrative", I think that action is warranted.
Sure, if you could find data showing that when you look at the city level, that there was a distinct rise in the murder rate based on partisan leadership that differed from state-level trends, you could maybe make that case. However, it seems incredibly implausible that states with larger cities, cities more often lead by Democrats, and with a larger portion of their population in those cities, would have a lower murder rate and a lower increase in their murder rate, yet the larger trend of increased murders would be due to disproportionate increases in murder in cities lead by Democrats. At the very least, it would require that States that broadly vote Democrat would in aggregate have dramatically lower murders and increases in murders, which would also be in conflict with the partisan narrative.
Confirmation bias tends to manifest as a desire for more in-depth analysis for statements that violate one's expectations, but the rational case here is that the prevailing narrative needs far more in-depth analysis to deserve any kind of support.
It'd be even more convincing if they were able to solve all murder cases and prevent murder from ever happening again, but setting the bar there in order to recognize that a false narrative is not actually supported by the data is an unreasonable standard.
I mean, I could play devils advocate here and say that the reason the 1# state (LA at 12) is so high is that the cities drag up the state rate (top three cities have rates over 30 with Democrat leadership). I'm not saying that validates Republican positions, but the article certainly doesn't refute this.
If that's the goal of the article, then it needs to provide the proper argument to invalidate that. Otherwise it seems like it's just obscuring the conversation through what is essentially a strawman argument (in the context of the liberal cities crime/murder argument that its targeting).
In general though, to support your devil's advocate thesis, you'd expect the states with the largest percentage of the population residing in urban areas would be the states with the highest murder rates. That would not be MS, LA, KY, AL and MO. So if the urban population is causal, you'd have to explain why the top states aren't NY, NJ, CA, MA, and NV.
Perhaps there's a case to be made that urban Democratic leadership mixed with Republican state and Federal leadership was the problem, but that seems like a pretty complex relationship to establish, and doesn't align with the narrative.
