Are there any studies on the correlation between political ideology and crime rates in the US?
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Executive Summary
Multiple recent studies show no simple, uniform correlation between broad political ideology and overall crime rates, while research on politically motivated violence finds different patterns for extremist violence versus general crime trends. Peer-reviewed and policy analyses converge on two conclusions: extremist violence in the United States has been predominantly right-wing in lethality and frequency across multiple datasets, though a 2025 policy brief flagged a short-term rise in left-wing incidents; meanwhile rigorous studies of local governance find mayoral partisanship does not reliably change city-level crime or policing outcomes, and public perceptions of crime diverge from official trends [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. Why multiple datasets say right-wing extremists account for more deadly violence — and why that matters
Research synthesizing datasets on extremist violence finds a clear pattern of greater lethality and frequency among right-wing actors. A 2019 PNAS study that combined two datasets concluded right-wing extremists were significantly more likely to commit violent acts than left-wing counterparts, a finding echoed by later analyses that tracked domestic terrorism and violent incidents through 2025 [1]. A September 2025 analysis explicitly documented that right-wing extremist violence in the U.S. was both more frequent and deadlier than left-wing violence, and that right-wing attacks accounted for the majority of domestic terrorism fatalities examined [2]. These results matter because they separate politically motivated violence from general crime and show ideological direction matters for the nature and lethality of extremist attacks, which affects counterterrorism priorities and resource allocation.
2. The 2025 uptick in left-wing incidents: numbers rose but lethality did not follow
A policy brief from September 2025 found that left-wing incidents outnumbered right-wing ones in 2025, marking the first year in decades where incident counts tipped that way, yet it emphasized that left-wing attacks remained generally less lethal than right-wing and jihadist attacks [3]. This divergence between incident counts and fatalities highlights the importance of measuring both frequency and severity: incident tallies alone can suggest a rising trend without reflecting the human cost usually captured by fatalities or mass-casualty events. The brief underscores that while analysts must track emerging left-wing activity, the overall threat profile remained dominated by higher-lethality right-wing actors, a nuance that is easy to lose in headlines focused solely on counts [3].
3. Studies of mayoral partisanship challenge “soft-on-crime” political narratives
City-level causal research published in 2025 used rigorous designs — including regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences — and found no detectable effect of mayoral partisanship on police employment, crime rates, or arrest patterns across hundreds of medium and large U.S. cities [4]. George Washington University research reaching similar conclusions strengthens the case that local partisan labels for executives do not translate into measurable differences in the core outcomes of public safety [5]. These findings counter common political narratives that Democratic mayors or local Democratic control systematically produce worse crime outcomes, and they suggest that policy details, institutional constraints, and local context matter more than party banners when it comes to measurable city-level crime metrics.
4. Public perceptions of crime diverge from statistical realities and drive politics
Public opinion research shows Republicans place much greater emphasis on violent crime as a top voting issue than Democrats did in 2022, with 73% of Republican voters calling it very important versus 49% of Democrats, even as federal statistics showed no broad recent uptick in violent crime outside a pandemic-era increase in homicides [6]. This mismatch between perception and aggregate crime data fuels partisan rhetoric and policy proposals, and it also shapes media and political agendas. The Council on Criminal Justice and other policy projects note that contested areas such as pretrial reform and prosecutorial discretion complicate how ideological preferences translate into policy choices, meaning perception-driven political pressure can produce policy churn without clear crime impacts [7].
5. The big picture: divergent measures, timeframes, and political agendas mean careful interpretation is required
Taken together, the evidence shows different relationships depending on what is measured: lethal politically motivated violence skews right in most datasets, incident counts can show short-term left-wing increases, and municipal partisan control does not show consistent effects on general crime rates [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Key caveats remain: definitions of “terrorism,” sample periods, geographic concentration, measurement of lethality versus frequency, and the influence of nonpartisan local factors all shape conclusions. Analysts and policymakers should avoid conflating extremist violence with routine crime metrics, scrutinize methods and timeframes, and recognize that political narratives often emphasize select metrics that serve advocacy goals rather than the full empirical picture [6] [3].