How scared should you be? What should you be scared about? Is it crime? The economy? And, dear American, are you really all that scared?
If there is one area of American politics where it looked like Democrats and Republicans might agree, it’s criminal justice reform. For a country that prides itself on freedom, Americans incarcerate more people than any other advanced democracy and, subsequently, spend more on prisons. Republicans and Democrats alike seem to understand this and support reform, though perhaps for very different reasons.
Democrats want reform for fairness, Republicans because of the growing fiscal toll of “tough on crime.” Enter Donald Trump, now positioning himself as the ‘Law & Order’ candidate and harkening a return to “tough on crime” policies that helped create the current mess. His political antennae are capturing discontent. Polling of the American public indicates that they are more concerned about crime than at any time in the last 15 years. As we learned from the Clinton years, concern about crime often has more to do with media portrayals than actual crime rates (see below):
Economic discontent is also disconnected from reality. The economy is the single most important issue according to an early-summer Gallup poll (38 percent), while immigration trails at 8 percent, and terrorism at 6 percent (crime registers at just 2 percent as the most important issue according to Gallup). Whether economy is good or bad depends on what measure you look at, and where you live ― or, as we noted a couple of months back,”even though things are so good, they still feel so bad.” What is clear, however, is that the economy is in much better shape than when President Obama took office. This is almost necessarily the case given that he took over during the Great Recession but hardly irrelevant to our current debates (see below):
So what are Trump voters so upset about? Well, first, understand that the greatest dissatisfaction is coming from non-Hispanic white voters. Hispanic and African-Americans are much more satisfied with the direction of the country (see Figure 3, below). Second, people are generally feeling better about the current and future personal finances, so the anger isn’t just rooted in economics. Third, they are, however, a little angry at the economic system but really pissed off about the political system (see Figure 4). This may help to explain Trump’s appeal. What is frightening is there is nothing in Trump’s brand of angry populism that is likely to make them any happier - other than punishing violators of “law and order” or undoing a democratic political system they claim to support in the abstract but hate the way it functions.
Coda (July 23, 7:34 AM GMT): In response to the use of FBI crime statistics, the Trump campaign called decades-long trend data about violent crime into question with the following statement: “Well, the FBI is certainly suspect after what they just did with Hillary Clinton.”
We love a good joke. Sadly, this is not one of them.