Trump country has less crime… apart from sexual assault

The headline: Counties that voted for Trump have significantly lower crime rates for a range of crimes including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson… but not for sexual assault, where the rape rate is higher in Trump country.

The details: Crime rates are statistically higher in counties that voted for Clinton compared with Trump counties, except for rape. Of the crime rates recorded by the ICPSR¹—murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson—robbery is the most statistically related to the 2016 election result (correlation of 58%). Robbery rates in Blue counties are three times higher than Red counties. The rape rate poorly explains the 2016 election result (correlation of 18%) and the confidence that Blue counties have a lower rate is only 90%.

Crime rates are largely related to population density (see chart below), where rates are higher in urban areas with higher “supply and demand” for crime.

The data: Crime data were sourced from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)¹. County-level 2016 election results were compiled by Charted Territory by visiting each state’s Secretary of State web page. The data were compiled and visualized using Microsoft Excel².

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1. https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/
2. https://products.office.com/en-us/excel

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