Which specific counties or cities account for the largest share of the red‑state homicide gap?
Executive summary
The “red‑state homicide gap” — the higher per‑capita murder rate measured in Republican‑led states compared with Democratic‑led states — is overwhelmingly concentrated in a relatively small set of high‑violence cities and the counties that contain them, with Jackson (Hinds County, MS) and New Orleans (Orleans Parish, LA) among the single biggest contributors referenced in contemporary reporting [1] [2] [3]. Analysts who decompose the gap find that removing a handful of large, Democratic‑run cities or their counties substantially reduces the apparent red‑state disadvantage, a point emphasized by both critics and supporters of the red/blue framing [4] [5].
1. What the “red‑state homicide gap” means and how it’s measured
Third Way’s state‑level analysis of CDC mortality data finds murder rates in red states about 33% higher than in blue states in recent years, and it points to Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama as the three states with the highest state homicide rates [1]; those state scores are supported by CDC state maps and public rankings showing Mississippi at or near the top of per‑capita homicide lists [6] [7]. Those state aggregates, however, fold together very different local outcomes — dense urban counties with very high homicide rates and large swaths of low‑crime rural territory — which is why the county‑ and city‑level picture matters for understanding what is actually driving the gap [4].
2. A handful of cities and counties carry outsized weight in the gap
Reporting and maps repeatedly identify particular municipal and county jurisdictions as outliers: Axios’s analysis of FBI city data shows eight of the top 10 cities with the highest murder rates and populations over 100,000 were in red states, led by Jackson, Mississippi, which had the nation’s highest city homicide rate in that dataset [2], while USAFacts and county‑level compilations single out Hinds County (home to Jackson) with very high per‑capita homicide figures [3]. VisualCapitalist’s mapping of the highest homicide rates also highlights New Orleans as one of the most violent major U.S. cities, indicating that Orleans Parish is a major contributor to Louisiana’s state rate [8]. Third Way’s state focus likewise locates the largest state‑level burdens in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama — implying that high‑violence cities or counties inside those states are principal drivers [1].
3. Evidence that removing certain cities/counties shrinks the gap
Analysts and formal briefings that subtract large urban counties from the red‑state totals report meaningful reductions in the red‑blue difference: a congressional‑briefing version of Third Way’s work documents the specific counties removed when recalculating red‑state murder rates, for example Madison County in Alabama, and notes the sensitivity of state results to these urban centers [5]. Independent critiques and think‑tank analyses argue the same point from the other direction — that many red‑state murders are concentrated in Democratic‑run cities and counties and thus county‑level breakdowns can flip the narrative — a contention summarized by Manhattan Institute and other critics who show the red‑blue contrast narrows or disappears under different controls or when particular cities are excluded [4].
4. Competing interpretations and limitations of the public record
There is no single, universally agreed decomposition in the sources that assigns exact shares of the red‑state gap to named counties; rather, published work shows a consistent pattern: a small set of high‑rate urban counties (e.g., Hinds County/Jackson, Orleans Parish/New Orleans and other large Southern urban jurisdictions) account for a disproportionate share of the excess homicides in red states, while methodological choices — CDC versus FBI data, whether counties are removed, and which covariates are controlled for — change the size and sometimes the sign of the red/blue difference [1] [3] [6] [4]. Conservative outlets and think tanks emphasize that Democratic counties inside red states get blamed for statewide problems [9], while proponents of the red‑state framing point to persistently high state rates rooted in those same localities [1].
5. Bottom line: which specific places matter most — and what is still unknown
The best available reporting and county‑level compilations identified in public sources point to Jackson/Hinds County (MS) and New Orleans/Orleans Parish (LA) — along with a cluster of high‑rate cities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama — as the single biggest, named contributors to the red‑state homicide gap [2] [3] [8] [1]. Exact percentage shares of the national or red‑state gap attributable to individual counties are not provided in the cited sources; producing that decomposition would require the underlying county‑by‑county homicide counts and a reproducible aggregation method that none of the cited pieces publishes in complete form [1] [5] [3].