Polling data released this week show that Americans’ views of crime rates nationwide have come closer to reflecting reality. But it’s less likely that we’ll come to our senses than that partisanship will force the data in a more precise direction than usual.

“Americans’ perception of crime in the US has improved”, write Gallup’s Megan Brenan, “with the percentage saying national crime has increased in the past year falling 13 points to 64 percent.” The number of respondents who say crime in the U.S. is “extremely” or “very serious” also fell 7 points to 56 percent over the past year.

At first glance, this is good news as it increasingly reflects reality.

“Both FBI and BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) data show dramatic declines in violent and property crime rates in the US since the early 1990s, when crime rose across much of the nation,” Pew’s John Gramlich Research wrote in April 2024. “Using FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49 percent between 1993 and 2022,” while property crime fell 59 percent over the same period. The BJS statistics were even more impressive, Gramlich found, writing that “U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell by 71 percent between 1993 and 2022.”

And yet people don’t seem to believe the good news. “In 23 of 27 Gallup polls conducted since 1993, at least 60 percent of U.S. adults said there was more crime nationwide than in the previous year, despite a trend toward a decline in the crime rate in the part of this period,” added Gramlich. Indeed, according to a graph on the latest Gallup releasethe last year in which fewer than 60 percent of respondents — 53 percent — said crime had increased from the previous year was 2004.

While the latest Gallup poll continues this trend, where a clear majority of people still believe crime is on the rise, it also indicates that the numbers are moving in the right direction. But unfortunately, people’s perceptions are unlikely to simply come in line with reality.

As Gallup’s Brenan notes, partisanship appears to be playing the biggest role in the decline. “October Poll Finds Partisans Have Widely Differing Views on U.S. Crime Rate, with Democrats’ Far More Positive Perceptions Driving the Overall Change From Last Year.” Indeed, while 68 percent of independents and 90 percent of Republicans said crime had increased from the previous year, only 29 percent of Democrats said the same. (General offence decreased in 2023 and looks set to do the same in 2024.)

This would make sense, as a pure partisan move: Former President Donald Trump supported each of his three candidacies through claiming that violent crime is out of control, so Republicans are probably more likely to believe him.

But Gallup’s trend shows that since 1993, as violent crime rates have steadily declined, Americans’ perceptions have shifted based on their partisan affiliation and who occupies the White House: In 2004, during President George W. Bush’s first term, the 53 percent. of respondents who believed crime had increased included 39% of Republicans but 67% of Democrats. (FBI statistics for that year indicator (that both violent and property crimes each fell by just over 2 percent that year.)

On the other hand, Americans in general seem particularly bad at judging crime trends: In 2014, 63 percent of all respondents told Gallup that crime had increased from the previous year, including 57 percent of Democrats and 72 % of Republicans. Meanwhile, 2014 turned out to be the least violent year in decades.

But Americans’ views on crime and criminal justice, no matter how capricious and ill-informed they may seem, are extremely important. After all, while the president likely has very little direct influence on criminal justice trends in local police precincts, voters have the power to elect prosecutors, who wield tremendous power in deciding who faces prison and how punitive they should be. could be their punishments. And there is evidence that voters’ perceptions of crime affect the type of prosecutor they are likely to favor.

“The increase in incarceration rates in the United States over the past 40 years is unprecedented and unique internationally,” 2014 study found. “Local elected officials—including state legislators who enacted sentencing policies and, in many places, judges and prosecutors who decided individual cases—were very in tune with their constituents’ concerns about crime. Under these conditions, the punishment policy moved in a more punitive direction. “

Prosecutors admit this too. One 2022 draft policy documentHarvard PhD candidate Chika Okafor found that “being in an election year (district attorney) increases total admissions per capita to state prisons and total months of incarceration per capita” , meaning prosecutors are more likely to seek prison terms and longer sentences for criminals in election years.

And despite the fact that with some exceptionscrime has been on an overall downward trend for three decades, America still has the highest incarceration rate of any country.

Even though public opinion polls may or may not seem particularly compelling as examples of political trends, how people feel about crime directly affects how they vote—and how the state treats those it arrests. As Okafor has written, “collective approaches to transforming US public opinion, and not just technocratic approaches to policy, may be critical to curbing mass incarceration.”