Americans are impressively bad at understanding crime trends

Please get ready to witness a truly ridiculous measure of public opinion. I don’t want to oversell it, but I do want you to know that, when I saw it, I exclaimed out loud, and so I want you to be prepared in the event that you are driving (always a good time to read stuff on the internet) or have a heart condition.

I’d like to begin by establishing some context. As you may know, murder in the United States rose steadily from the 1960s through the 1980s until peaking in the early 1990s. There are a lot of theories about why the peak occurred then, but federal (and other) data demonstrates that the peak of murders in America came in the first half of that decade. That’s true both in terms of raw numbers and, more importantly, of the rate at which murders were occurring as a function of population.

It’s also true despite the surge in murders that began in Donald Trump’s first term in office during the coronavirus pandemic.

The rise and fall of murder is largely a story of the rise and fall of murders in American cities since that’s where a large percentage of Americans live. But data compiled by analyst Jeff Asher — whose work on the subject doesn’t receive the attention and credit it should — shows how that peak emerged and faded. The number of murders in various U.S. cities during the first half of this year is among the lowest on record in those places.

AND YET.

YouGov asked Americans this week if they thought the murder rate in American cities had risen or fallen since 1990. And most Americans, completely incorrectly, said that they thought murders had increased. A third thought the rate had increased a lot, which is the opposite of true!

Why? The partisan split on responses offers a hint: Republicans — who remain skeptical of cities, to put it generously — are much more likely to think that murder has increased. Which, again, it hasn’t.

Fascinatingly, younger Americans, people who didn’t live through the surge in crime that unfolded in the 1980s and early 1990s, are more likely to understand that murders have receded. Older Americans, who are also more likely to be Republicans, are more likely to be incorrect about the trend.

I’d indicated the year 1990 on the initial graphs so you can go back and compare murder rates/counts at that point with the rates now. But let’s put a fine point on it. Here’s how the number of murders in the cities Asher has tracked changed over the first half of each year relative to 1990.

That’s only some cities, but it’s not cherry-picking. In New York City, for example, the number of murders so far this year is down 85 percent relative to 1993. Last year, murders were down 83 percent relative to 1990. You have to ask yourself: When avatars of the right like Charlie Kirk proclaim that the city is intensely scary, is that a reflection of the city or of Charlie Kirk?

Murders, happily, are down in American cities. But there’s a lot of investment and political utility in suggesting that they are not. Americans, unfortunately, tend to believe it.