Red State Murder Rate is 23% Higher than Blue States... Why?

The Two-Decade Red State Murder Problem

Full article here: https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-two-decade-red-state-murder-problem

• The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020.

• Over this 21-year span, this Red State murder gap has steadily widened from a low of 9% more per capita red state murders in 2003 and 2004 to 44% more per capita red state murders in 2019, before settling back to 43% in 2020.

• Altogether, the per capita Red State murder rate was 23% higher than the Blue State murder rate when all 21 years were combined.

• If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have suffered over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020.

• Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed.

Why is this happening?

Red states tend to have looser gun laws so I guess they are able to protect themselves from murder... That's the republican theory right?

Republicans also say they are the party of law and order and it is blue states that are crime infested. Why is there so much more murder in red states?

Red states tend to be more religious too...

Why? Why are red states so much more dangerous?

Well, this is fascinating.

I started looking up studies on this. Every one of the top 10 murder states were either Confederacy states or border states in the Civil War. That doesn't account for all of the 25 states, because not all of these states existed in the Civil War, but includes most of the usual suspects.

Someone did a study in 1994 on the "Southern Culture of Honor". That's here: https://www.simine.com/240/readings/Cohen_et_al_(2).pdf. Basically, a person who was part of this study would be identify as northern or southern raised. Then, someone would bump into them and call them an asshole. Researchers assessed the response, which was far more likely to be confrontational from the Southern raised.

So, if you're born and raised in "Honor Culture" and Republican pundits have you thinking the immigrants are going to invade your home and defile your daughter, you may just be inclined to overreact.

Quote by AngelEthics

Well, this is fascinating.

I started looking up studies on this. Every one of the top 10 murder states were either Confederacy states or border states in the Civil War. That doesn't account for all of the 25 states, because not all of these states existed in the Civil War, but includes most of the usual suspects.

Someone did a study in 1994 on the "Southern Culture of Honor". That's here: https://www.simine.com/240/readings/Cohen_et_al_(2).pdf. Basically, a person who was part of this study would be identify as northern or southern raised. Then, someone would bump into them and call them an asshole. Researchers assessed the response, which was far more likely to be confrontational from the Southern raised.

So, if you're born and raised in "Honor Culture" and Republican pundits have you thinking the immigrants are going to invade your home and defile your daughter, you may just be inclined to overreact.

Honor culture sounds like a nice way of saying thin skinned snowflakes. I mean most of them also have a culture of poverty and ignorance. Deep southern states rank amongst the lowest when it comes to people with higher education. Plus they all have guns. I imagine guns + ignorance = murder.

Quote by Magical_felix

Honor culture sounds like a nice way of saying thin skinned snowflakes. I mean most of them also have a culture of poverty and ignorance. Deep southern states rank amongst the lowest when it comes to people with higher education. Plus they all have guns. I imagine guns + ignorance = murder.

So dumbasses, primed to be offended who also have guns? That sounds about right to me.

Quote by ElCoco

Were the cities' murder counts higher or lower than the boonies'?

It didn't break it down by regions within the states.

Quote by AngelEthics

It didn't break it down by regions within the states.

In the report I posted it literally says this.

"Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed."

Just in case any attempt to obfuscate the facts is going on by ElCocko ;)

Quote by ElCoco

OK. I couldn't find that either. Identifying where the murders were most frequent could shed some light on the issue.

Quote by Magical_felix

In the report I posted it literally says this.

"Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed."

Just in case any attempt to obfuscate the facts is going on by ElCocko ;)

It looks like it doesn't matter whether it's rural or urban. I missed that, Magical Felix. Thanks.

So, even when you give red states a fairly big handicap, they still have a higher murder rate. I was someone who has been duped by the republican misinformation campaign about blue cities. Democrats really need to push this information.

Quote by Ironic

It's interesting how much the numbers change when accounting for different variables.

"Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed."

After accounting for the larger cities, which often have Democrats running them, the murder rate's about half the headline number. And instead of every year, it's most years.

I wonder if there are other confounding variables.

Is that really a confounding variable?

If we agree that urban areas have higher crime rates in any state, and we remove the largest one from the data in red states (but not in blue), the data should skew towards red states having lower homicide than blue, but it doesn't.

It's essentially giving a runner a 30 second lead and that runner still not winning.

Quote by Ironic

Since this thirdway analysis is political, it's likely to be sensitive to the political makeup of what is and isn't excluded from the number crunching.

Big cities are usually Democratic cities.

The blue/red difference is almost halved when we remove the largest city from the data in red states.

What would happen to the blue/red difference if we removed the Democratic-controlled locations instead of removing the state's largest city?

You've embarrassed yourself again, Ironic.

Quote by Ironic

Since this thirdway analysis is political, it's likely to be sensitive to the political makeup of what is and isn't excluded from the number crunching.

Big cities are usually Democratic cities.

The blue/red difference is almost halved when we remove the largest city from the data in red states.

What would happen to the blue/red difference if we removed the Democratic-controlled locations instead of removing the state's largest city?

Thirdway took the numbers reported to the CDC. All murders from a state and whether that state went for Biden or Trump. I don't see a lot of room for manipulation in there.

If big cities are often democratically controlled, to the tune of about 65%, and if big cities experience higher homicide rates, how is excluding the largest city in red state doing anything but helping their statistics?

In addition, they found this for a single year and went back and looked at every years since 2000, just in case it was a fluke. It wasn't.

So, the only thing left to ask is why. Why do red states see this trend?

Quote by Ironic

If the 5 largest cities in the state are Democratic-controlled, and only the largest one is excluded, the effect of the next 4 will be included as if they were Republican (red).

I've shown that's not necessarily the only thing left.

You don't think that excluding the largest city was a gift in the first place?

And also, is your theory that blue pockets in red states are the cause of the homicide issue? When a whole blue state, without any exclusion, still has fewer homicides?

Quote by Ironic

If the 5 largest cities in the state are Democratic-controlled, and only the largest one is excluded, the effect of the next 4 will be included as if they were Republican (red).

I've shown that's not necessarily the only thing left.

Man, this kid has too much crayon wax in his system.

They don't just exclude one city in the study, that's just something you're making up. It clearly states excluding "cities", that's plural. City also has a technical definition.

Quote by Magical_felix

Man, this kid has too much crayon wax in his system.

They don't just exclude one city in the study, that's just something you're making up. It clearly states excluding "cities", that's plural. City also has a technical definition.

I also assumed it was one city per state, but you're right. It doesn't say that.

Quote by AngelEthics

I also assumed it was one city per state, but you're right. It doesn't say that.

Also it's interesting to note that the suicide rate is higher in rural areas than urban areas.

New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America

Rising homicide rates don’t tell the whole story. When you dig deeper into data on deaths, you'll find the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america#xj4y7vzkg

Gun Violence in Rural America

While politicians and the media have largely focused their attention on gun violence in large cities, rural communities continue to see a rise in gun-related deaths.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun-violence-in-rural-america/

As gun violence continues to fuel violent crime across the nation, some conservative politicians are not only refusing to support commonsense gun violence prevention measures but are also actively rolling back gun laws that help make our communities safer. Many of these same elected officials continue to perpetuate the narrative that gun violence is only a problem in urban, Democrat-led cities, and media outlets are skewing the public perspective by heavily focusing on gun violence in cities such as Chicago. The truth, however, is that rural communities—particularly in red states—have increasingly faced levels of gun violence that match or outpace urban areas.

Quote by Ironic

I didn't say they just excluded one city in the study,

So that's something you just made up.

You did say that.... I think you're confused Ironic.

Quote by Ironic

I wasn't advancing a theory. What I've done is to show the flaw in the analysis methodology.

What is that flaw? That they didn't exclude enough of a red state to make homicide rates on a par with blue states?

Quote by AngelEthics

What is that flaw? That they didn't exclude enough of a red state to make homicide rates on a par with blue states?

The flaw is that they didn't gerrymander the data lol

Quote by AngelEthics

What is that flaw? That they didn't exclude enough of a red state to make homicide rates on a par with blue states?

this is what he does. it's his MO. he just tells you that you're wrong regardless of the facts and refuses to explain why. get used to if it you're going to hang out in here.

Quote by Magical_felix

Also it's interesting to note that the suicide rate is higher in rural areas than urban areas.

And meth use. People in the countryside are bored and depressed.

Quote by AngelEthics

And meth use. People in the countryside are bored and depressed.

In cities too but when you have millions of people in one spot you get a place like skid row for example but if you look at it per capita, it's less than in rural areas. But of course it's easy to just show a group of a dozen people getting high in an alleyway and just go "look, the democrat run cities are cesspools".

It's easier for propagandists to do that than show all the reasons why it's so wonderful to live in a town of 2,000 people than say a city with millions of people. The city will drastically have more quality of life features than a small town in the middle of nowhere so they chose to lie about crime, drug use etc.

Above, we see right-wing, red state defenders falling flat on their face, as they hopelessly fail to discredit actual numbers evidence clearly showing red states have higher murder rates than blue states.

Quote by Ironic

The flaw is that they excluded only the murders from the county with the largest city.

The analysis is claiming to compare blue/red murder rates, right?

The analysis claims the murder rate is related to the political party in control.

Most cities are Democratic-controlled.

Only the murders from the county with the largest city are excluded. The authors claim this controls for the possibility that the murder rate in that city (probably Democratic-controlled) skews the murder rate for the state.

That is the flaw because it fails to exclude the murders from the other (probably Democratic-controlled) cities.

If the exclusion really did control for "blue" murders, then the correct analysis would organize the murders by politically controlled location.

Then you'd be comparing apples to apples.

As the analysis is at the moment, it misrepresents the murder/political relationship.

Ok. Tell me if I'm representing you correctly.

You think that state-by-state party affiliation and murder rate is too broad of a brush, and that this data should be collected and reported county-by-county?

If that's correct, you're still going to get a mix towns and townships that may or may not agree with the politics of the county. How small do you need to go to show the trend is real? Especially when the study tried to correct for that by eliminating the largest element that may have skewed those numbers?

Quote by Magical_felix

In cities too but when you have millions of people in one spot you get a place like skid row for example but if you look at it per capita, it's less than in rural areas. But of course it's easy to just show a group of a dozen people getting high in an alleyway and just go "look, the democrat run cities are cesspools".

It's easier for propagandists to do that than show all the reasons why it's so wonderful to live in a town of 2,000 people than say a city with millions of people. The city will drastically have more quality of life features than a small town in the middle of nowhere so they chose to lie about crime, drug use etc.

It's true. I blame John Mellencamp for glorifying small town life.

Edited because I fucked the punchline.

Quote by Chryses

Do you disagree with what I posted?

I feel like it's an SAT question. 7.

I think that what I said to Ironic applies here. You want this to break down the data to counties or cities, right? I argue that the numbers may not be as precise as they could be, but that doesn't mean they're wrong.

Quote by Chryses

You are correct. The procedure mixes Democratic and Republican predispositions towards murder.

For example:

Take a red state.

Each state has N counties. For this example, set N = 12

Each county has a county seat. The county seat is usually the largest city in the county. If that is not true in a county, then another city is the largest city in the county.

The larger the city, the more likely it is to have a Democratic administration. For this example, set P = .66

In the example, this produces twelve cities, the largest city in each of the twelve counties.

With P = .66, there can be expected eight cities with Democratic administrations and four with Republican administrations.

If the murder rate is different between Democrat and Republican run cities, excluding only the murder count from the county with the largest city - as documented in the linked article - whatever the difference was (R>D or D>R) will be intermixed with the non-city murder rate.

The procedure in the linked article fails to compare apples to apples.

Alabama has the highest rate in the country per capita. It skyrockets further when you remove the big cities from the equation.

Quote by Chryses

Ironic hit the nail on the head.

The analysis purports to tease out of the data political predispositions towards murder.

At its base (when excluding the murders from only one of the cities), it combines whatever differences there may be between Democrat and Republican tendencies in all the other cities.

If the goal is to distinguish assumed different predispositions between Democrats and Republicans to murder, then those groups should be measured.

Those different groups were not measured in the red states.

So in order to be clear, you're saying you need to gerrymander the data until it looks like red states are safer despite what the actual real facts are?

Quote by Chryses

Ironic hit the nail on the head.

The analysis purports to tease out of the data political predispositions towards murder.

At its base (when excluding the murders from only one of the cities), it combines whatever differences there may be between Democrat and Republican tendencies in all the other cities.

If the goal is to distinguish assumed different predispositions between Democrats and Republicans to murder, then those groups should be measured.

Those different groups were not measured in the red states.

Political predisposition to murder?

This data-set says, here's a state that likes what Trump is selling. That makes them majority Republican. Republicans like to point to Democratically run cities and wax poetic about the crime and drugs. It's hypocritical. We don't need to dig down to city level politics and run a t-test to see how the culture that goes with these politics does not lead to a safer society.

Quote by Chryses

That is what the 23% (before adjustment) or the 12% (after adjustment) greater-murder-rate-in-red-states-than-blue-states result would have one believe.

My example shows that the claim is groundless.

You are mistaken.

Plus you're not posting on topic. The topic is "why are red states more murderous?"

Can you please contribute to the topic..