Stan Greenberg: How Democrats Mishandled Crime

[brooklynite]

In 2021, I created a multiracial and multigenerational team of pollsters funded by the American Federation of Teachers and the Center for Voter Information to look at how to raise Democratic support with all working-class voters. It included HIT Strategies and Equis Labs.

They conducted the research in the African American, Hispanic, and Asian American communities. All of those communities pointed to the rising worry about crime. And they worried more about the rise in crime than the rise in police abuse. Yet Democrats throughout 2021 focused almost exclusively on the latter. Clearly, these communities wanted political leaders to address both.

Despite Democrats’ seeming indifference to community safety, we found that Democrats in 2021 could make gains if they reassured voters on the police. Voters believed Democrats were for defunding the police, so messages that showed respect for the police and advocated for funding got heard. The message also included “urgent reforms, including better training and accountability to prevent excessive force and racial profiling.” And since the principal doubt was about the police, the message had to focus only on the police.

This Democratic crime message was preferred to the Republicans’ by 8 points, and hearing it gave the Democrats another 2-point lift in their congressional vote margin.

But crime rates in the major cities grew well into 2022. New York City has seen citywide shooting incidents increase by 13 percent compared to July 2021, and the number of murders increased for the month by 34 percent compared to this time last year. Philadelphia and Chicago experienced prominent shoot-outs on the subway, and in Philadelphia overall shootings have increased by 3 percent and violent crimes are up 7 percent.

As a result, crime was a top-tier issue in the midterm election, and that included Blacks, who ranked it almost as high as the cost of living in poll after poll. For Hispanics and Asian Americans, crime came just below the cost of living as a priority. And Republicans continued to remind voters that Democrats continued to support “defunding the police,” even by linking candidates to organizations they took money from, like Planned Parenthood, which back in 2020 called for defunding.

https://prospect.org/politics/how-democrats-mishandled-crime/

With all due respect to their intentions, too many liberal message makers continue to look at African Americans as a monolithic voting block, whose only crime concern is police violence. The election of Eric Adams in NYC and Byron Brown in Buffalo are indicative that they are also concerned about violent crime, robbery, vandalism, etc. in their neighborhoods. While African Americans continue to overwhelmingly vote Democratic, there has been a growth in the number of votes for Republicans. I haven't a commensurate adjustment in the national Democratic message towards them.

[Cattledog]

1. This is why Walker is neck & neck with Warnock here in GA.

[brooklynite]

2. The biggest problem is that the Republicans grabbed the police violence narrative...

...and tagged every vulnerable Democratic candidate, whether it was applicable or not.

"When you're explaining, you're losing".