Watching live television these days in central Ohio means seeing lots of campaign ads, and those now running most often are the Trump campaign's ads claiming crime will surge if Joe Biden were elected. Seeing all these ads (and noticing that we no longer hear Prez Trump going after Biden for his support of the tough 1994 Crime Bill), I keep thinking the Trump campaign must have some internal polls indicating that crime and fear messages will play well with many voters across the political spectrum.
Now, via this Hill piece headlined "Poll: Majority say they are concerned about rising crime in US cities," I see there is a public poll highlighting how many are really concerned about rising crime. Here are excerpts:
A majority of Americans say they are concerned about rising crime in U.S. cities, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill on Monday. Seventy-seven percent of respondents say they are concerned that crime is rising in the nation’s cities, while 46 percent of respondents said they were concerned about rising crime in their own communities.
"At the same time they see an increase of violence and crime and are concerned that prosecutors are not prosecuting the crimes — they blame the protests and the high unemployment when asked what is responsible for the spike in violence," said Harvard CAPS/Harris polling director Mark Penn. "They also single out social media for being used to coordinate violence and in their view not doing much to curb it."
A New York Times analysis published earlier this month showed that overall crime down is done 5.3 percent in 25 large U.S. cities in relation to last year. Violent crime was down 2 percent, according to the findings. However, murder in the same 25 cities is up 16.1 percent compared to 2019, according to the Times. New York's homicide rate for the first half of 2020 is up 23 percent over 2019, according to the city's police department.
New York police reported 205 citywide shooting incidents in June 2020, compared to 89 in June 2019, marking a 130.3 percent increase. Burglary in the city also increased, with 1,783 incidents reported in June 2020 compared to 817 in June 2019. In Chicago, homicides rose 39 percent between the last week of June and the first week of July of this year, according to the city's police department.
The development come as calls to defund police departments amid nationwide protests over racial injustice grow louder. The Trump administration, in turn, has touted a staunch "law and order" message. President Trump announced last week that he would send federal law enforcement officers into Chicago and Albuquerque, N.M., as part of his crackdown on what he has called an unchecked surge of violence in Democratic-run cities....
The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey of 1,932 registered voters was conducted on July 21-23. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll throughout 2020. Full poll results will be posted online later this week.
Notably, this prepared testimony of Attorney General William Barr for today's scheduled House Judiciary Committee hearing also makes such of rising crime and the need for "law and order." This polling confirms my suspicion that we will be hearing a lot more on these topics in the next three months as a big election approaches.
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