In my last post, I said that perceptions of change in crime rates responded to actual conditions. This post looks as party differences. The proportion of Democrats and Republicans who think that crime is increasing in their area (independents are in between--I leave them out to make the figure more readable):
Under Biden, there's been a large partisan gap, with Republicans more likely to believe that crime has increased. But a partisan difference existed before then--the average perception of an increase by administration:
Dem Rep Difference
GHW Bush 54% 46% -8%
Clinton 38% 41% +3%
GW Bush 45% 36% -9%
Obama 42% 53% +11%
Trump 40% 37% -3%
Biden 41% 70% +29%
The party difference was positive (meaning Republicans were more likely to see an increase) under all three Republican administrations and negative under all three Democratic administrations. That is, people see things as better when their party is in power. But the effect seems to be bigger for Republicans. This is clear when you look at years when party control changed*:
Dem Rep Ind
2000-2001 -2% -17% -5%
2008-9 -1% +13% +7%
2016-7 +4% -18% -3%
2020-21 +3 +29% +9%
In previous posts, I found that with views about the future of the next generation Republicans were more affected by party control than Democrats were, but that with ratings of current economic conditions Democrats and Republicans were about equally affected.
If views are affected by both partisanship and actual conditions, that raises the question of whether the affect of conditions differs by party. I couldn't get any definite results on that point.
*There was no survey in 1993, 1994, or 1995, so it's not possible to judge the Bush-Clinton transition.
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