Why crime is still Trump’s best issue

Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, DC’s police force — which looks like something between an authoritarian power grab and an empty stunt — doesn’t look like a political winner at first glance. 

A poll from YouGov last week showed little support for Trump’s move; 34 percent of respondents approved of the idea, and 47 percent disapproved.

Yet the pushback from Democrats — which often focused on pointing out that DC crime was trending downward, or arguing it wasn’t such a serious problem — shows why the larger crime issue remains perilous for them, and advantageous for Trump.

Though Trump is unpopular, crime remains one of his strongest issues, and one of the Democratic Party’s worst. 

That sticks in Democrats’ craw. Trump’s recitation of DC crime statistics was filled with blatant misrepresentations. Furthermore, Trump himself was indicted four times, and he notably pardoned even the violent rioters of January 6, 2025. How could they be losing the law and order issue to this guy?

Yet the polling says very clearly that they are.

Polls consistently show the public prefers Republicans to Democrats on crime

In May, separate polls from both CNN and YouGov asked respondents about which party they trusted more on over a dozen different issues, and both found that crime was the Democrats’ worst of all. (The GOP had a 13-point advantage in one poll, and a 12-point advantage in the other.)

It hasn’t always been this way. Even as recently as 2021, the two parties were about evenly matched in polling from Langer Research. But in 2022, the GOP’s advantage on crime surged to its highest in decades of the firm’s polling — and it hasn’t gone away since.

That’s for a pretty straightforward reason: A large majority of the public became convinced, due to very real rising crime rates, that crime in cities had become a very serious problem and that tougher policies are necessary — but Democrats often don’t seem like they feel the same way.

The crime rates have since declined, but voter concerns haven’t gone away. In last week’s YouGov poll, a large majority — 67 percent — believed crime was a major problem in US cities, and only 23 percent thought it was a minor problem.

And back in April 2024, the Pew Research Center asked registered voters whether they believed the US criminal justice system was generally too tough on criminals, or not tough enough. It wasn’t even close. A mere 13 percent chose “too tough,” while 61 percent said “not tough enough.”

Notably, even a plurality of Biden supporters (40 percent of them) believed the system was “not tough enough,” while just 21 percent of them thought it was too tough. Among the public, the belief that the criminal justice system is overly harsh on criminals is a fringe view. But among progressive activists, it’s a core belief.

Democrats have a crime problem

For the past decade, the intellectual and organizing energy among progressive criminal justice activists has been around preventing police violence and making sentencing of criminals more lenient. In these circles, distrust of police and law enforcement and disdain for mass incarceration were widespread, and concern about crime in cities became viewed as racially coded.  

Responding to these pressures, Democratic politicians struck an increasingly awkward balance on crime issues. They’ve tried to disavow “defund the police,” and big city mayors who have crime-concerned constituents have tried to get tough. But it hasn’t been enough to change the party’s brand.

Why not? Another YouGov poll — taken in September 2024 — asked respondents about several of then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s criminal justice policy proposals and Trump’s. Harris’s specific proposals were generally more popular.

But on the question of who would do a better job handling crime? Trump had an 8-point advantage.

That’s because voters don’t make up their minds by tallying a policy laundry list. They look for signals about “whose side are you on?” And Trump has signaled in many ways that he’s on the “tough on crime” side. Democrats’ signals have been more mixed. 

So when Democrats are tempted to say anyone worried about DC’s crime level is ignorant, a scaredy-cat, or a demagogue, they should be aware they’re going out on a limb.

While voters may think Trump is going too far or mishandling certain cases, the broader crime issue remains favorable to him. It will take some serious work for Democrats to change that perception. Crime remains one of the party’s most glaring political weaknesses.