As Election '24 Looms, Concern About Crime Highest Since '93

Anyone who reviews extensive analysis of crime trends like those conducted by Chris Kemble for the Maciver Institute and American Thinker may wonder why crime sometimes measures as one of the biggest issues for voters and other years does not show up in polls at all.

His research outlines crime trends the result in current news of countless college student protests across the country with no respect for law enforcement

The first grassroots statewide tour I set up for my first political boss, George Allen, was on using money seized from criminals to fight crime, and a few years later Allen came from 38 points behind to win a gubernatorial race with a tough-on-crime message that garnered him an unheard of 17% of the Black vote amid my native city of Richmond, Virginia, ranking second only to Detroit in per capita murders.

In the decades since, Democrats do well when crime is not an issue, while Republicans do well when it is an issue.

According to Gallup, Republicans won three straight presidential elections when more than 40% of voters perceived crime as bad enough that they were nervous walking within a mile of their home. Presidents Clinton and Obama won when fear of crime dropped below 40% — in part because once cell phones became the norm a potential victim on the streets could dial 911.

Joe Biden won in 2020 when concern about crime was at the lowest point since Gallup began asking the question in the 1960s at, only 29%.

In the 2022 midterms it looked like tough-on-crime stances of Republicans would lead to a red wave until Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortion shot past crime as the No. 1 issue. That election saw 23% of voters choosing Democrats because they favored abortion rights, and only about half that number choosing Republicans because of concern about crim,e and only 6% voting for Republicans because they were anti-abortion.

It may not be a coincidence that for the first time since 1993 more than 40% of Americans fear crime near their home, and Trump is now beating Biden in all battleground states.

The last time concern topped 40%, Republicans proposed the “Taking Back Our Streets Act” as part of the “Contract with America” as their campaign theme in 1994, and picked up more than 50 seats to take over Congress for the first time in 40 years. This included measures to ensure stronger truth-in-sentencing to keep criminals behind bars longer and funding for more prison construction and law enforcement.

When asked their most important issue, inflation is cited much more often than crime. However, leading teams knocking on tens of thousands of doors in recent months, it became clear that a lot of people are concerned about crime again, but those people generally say “immigration” is their top issue but then explain that this is the case because an open border leads to crime.

When a voter tells us they are concerned about immigration, they immediately add they are concerned because it leads to fentanyl coming to their town, violent criminals being set free after crossing the border, and human trafficking networks being set up.

A recent Monmouth University poll found that 80% of surveyed voters, more than any in the poll’s history, see illegal immigration as a top issue, with 60% also saying those seeking asylum should be made to stay in Mexico and, for the first time ever, a majority supporting the construction of former President Donald Trump's border wall, once widely considered a taboo subject for voters.

This was such a notable result that Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said that it’s becoming increasingly clear that, “Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year.”

Not only does recent Harvard CAPS-Harris polling concur, with immigration ranking as the top issue among surveyed voters, but crime and drugs ranked third, seeing major increases in voter interest over the past few months, only points behind inflation and the economy.

A Republic works best when candidates’ campaigns center on their grassroots support. As I saw firsthand in 2014 when Dave Brat defeated then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the grassroots are key if this much-needed change is ever going to be accomplished. Candidates need to communicate that, mean it from the bottom of their soul and base their campaign on wide-ranging, united support behind ending these soft-on-crime and illegal immigration policies.

It’s no wonder that not only have we seen progressive leaders, like New York City's mayor, now against sanctuary city laws and saying he can't handle these crises, and that stories, like the murder of Laken Riley, have received so much coverage.

The chickens have come home to roost on illegal immigration and crime, and it’ll be more important than ever that candidates, up and down the ticket, not only say as such, but take full advantage of this to win this November, bring back law and order, and return sanity to localities across our Republic.