Republicans often assert that cities run by Democrats are more crime-ridden than those run by Republicans. Democrats often counter there’s no evidence of that. Neither side presents evidence one way or another, other than the anecdotal sort. So I decided to look into the matter myself, using cities with Republican mayors as a proxy for cities that are not dominated by Democrats or progressives. My sample included all the cities with Republican mayors on Wikipedia’s list of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the US, of which there were ten with Republican mayors. I also chose ten cities with Democratic mayors from Wikipedia’s list and then looked up the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) 2019-2020 figures for homicide and aggravated assault crime rates, et voila!. Here is what I found:
Note this is an exploratory exercise, not a scientific study. Sample size is teeny and sample selection was not random. Correlation is not causation. That some Democrat-run cities have super-high violent crime rates and some Republican-led cities have pretty low violent crime rates may be due to factors unrelated to the party affiliation of their mayors. Still, it’s better than saying…”Well, look at San Francisco”.
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References:
Major Cities Chiefs Association: Violent Crime Report: Year-end Comparison, Agency Totals: January 1 to December 31, 2020 and 2019. 66 of 70 responding agencies. https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/MCCA-Violent-Crime-Report-2020-and-2019-Year-End-Final.pdf Accessed June 12, 2020
Wikipedia: List of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_largest_cities_in_the_United_States Accessed June 12, 2020.