The crime boom might not hurt Democrats as much as we think

More to the point, vast demographic changes over the past 50 years have re-sorted the American population. Today’s swing voters are affluent suburbanites, not working-class residents of transitional urban neighborhoods. The places where violent crime is on the rise—namely, cities—are deep blue and unlikely to change. The places where violent crime is not on the rise—namely, suburbs—are the new political battleground.

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Polling consistently shows that while a majority of Americans believe crime is a very, or even the most, serious problem facing the country (59 percent in a recent Washington Post/ABC poll), very few believe it is a problem in the places they actually live (only 17 percent). In a sharply siloed media environment, it’s easy to see how conservative viewers of Fox News might be led to believe that Joe Biden’s administration has led to “American carnage.”

But voters aren’t distributed the way they were in 1970. It’s the educated suburbs that are up for grabs now, and voters there simply don’t confront violent crime on a daily basis in the same way that the working-class Democrats of Brooklyn or Milwaukee did a half century ago. If they don’t perceive crime as a threat to them personally, will it motivate their decisions in November 2022? The historical record would suggest that it won’t.

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