Fact check: What is the number of reported violent crimes between Democrats and Republicans in the US since 2020?

1. Why the numbers diverge: competing methods that shape dramatic conclusions

Different studies use distinct units of analysis—county vs. state vs. incident lists—and divergent outcome measures, which produces radically different headlines. The Heritage Foundation analyses emphasize county-level homicide rates, concluding blue counties show higher murder rates when local-level data are used, thereby challenging state-level narratives ^{[1] [4]}. By contrast, the September 2025 research threads focus on named political-violence incidents and attribute incidents and fatalities to ideological blocs (left or right), counting discrete episodes of politically motivated violence rather than population-normalized homicide rates. These methodological choices—unit of analysis, whether incidents are labeled “political,” and inclusion windows—drive conflicting conclusions ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

2. The “left-leaning violence” claim: dramatic tallies with contested sourcing

Several analyses and commentaries published in September 2025 assert that 70–90% of incidents and 75–85% of fatalities in political violence since 2016 are attributable to left-leaning actors, with total incidents and fatalities given as roughly 400–600 and 150–200 respectively; these claims frequently appear in advocacy-oriented outlets and critique of scholarship attributing most political violence to the right ^{[2] [5]}. These pieces emphasize decentralized protest-related violence—BLM/Antifa episodes, anti-Israel/Palestine clashes, and Islamist-motivated attacks—and highlight particular high-casualty events, but they often lack transparent, reproducible incident lists and comparative exposure-adjusted rates, making cross-study comparison difficult ^{[2] [5]}.

3. The “right-wing violence” evidence: academic analyses pointing to lethality

Academic and investigative pieces published in mid- to late-September 2025 present data showing right-wing attacks account for a substantial majority of domestic terrorism deaths since 2001 and that right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly in recent years, citing high-profile mass-shooting events historically linked to right-wing extremist motives. These studies rely on incident coding frameworks that classify domestic terrorism fatalities by perpetrator motivation and find right-wing perpetrators responsible for a majority of fatalities, a conclusion reinforced by retrospective cases such as Charleston and El Paso ^{[3] [6]}. The studies assert lethality as a key metric rather than raw incident counts.

4. Contradictions arise because definitions of “political” and “left/right” differ

A central point of disagreement across sources is how “political violence” is defined: whether to include protest-related disorder, ideologically motivated mass shootings, hate crimes, or acts by organized extremist groups. Some investigations categorize unrest tied to protests as “left-leaning” events, while others restrict analysis to extremist-organized terrorism and lone actors motivated by explicit ideological manifestos, frequently tagging the latter as right-wing. These definitional choices change both numerator and denominator dramatically, complicating attempts to produce a single cross-study count for 2020–present ^{[7] [2]}.

5. Timeframe and geography matter: 2016–2025 vs. 2020 onward, counties vs. states

Sources use overlapping but nonidentical time windows—some aggregate incidents from 2016 through 2025, while others analyze 2018–2024 CDC homicide data or contrast county-level homicide rates since 2020—producing divergent narratives. The Heritage Foundation argues county-level analysis is essential to avoid ecological fallacies from state-level aggregation, whereas political-violence trackers assemble incident-level chronologies that span multiple years and jurisdictions. Consequently, comparing a county-level homicide rate with a curated list of political-violence incidents is an apples-to-oranges exercise that yields contested findings ^{[8] [3]}.

6. What the evidence collectively shows and what’s missing for an authoritative answer

Taken together, the documents show no agreed numeric total of violent crimes “between Democrats and Republicans” since 2020; instead, the literature offers competing tallies that emphasize different phenomena—local homicide rates, protest-related disorder, or ideologically motivated terrorism. Common missing elements across studies include a transparent, reproducible incident dataset; consistent ideological coding rules; population-adjusted rates; and clear inclusion/exclusion criteria for what constitutes “political” violence. Without unified methodology, headline percentages (e.g., 60% higher murder rates in blue counties or 75–80% of domestic terrorism deaths linked to the right) cannot be reconciled into a single verified count ^{[1] [3] [2]}.

7. Bottom line and what reliable follow-up would require

To produce an authoritative numeric answer you would need a reproducible dataset that: (a) defines “political violence” and separates it from general crime, (b) codes perpetrator motivation transparently, (c) uses consistent time windows (e.g., 2020–present), and (d) reports both raw counts and population-adjusted rates by jurisdiction. Current sources present important, but partial, pictures: the Heritage work spotlights geographic homicide patterns, some September 2025 pieces emphasize left-leaning protest violence, and peer-reviewed analyses underscore the lethality of right-wing perpetrators—none provide a unified, validated count for 2020 onward ^{[4] [2] [6]}.