1) In part because most cities of any size are run by democrats.

2) “over 100,000 population”. This is the factor that prevents these from mostly being “red”. I assume this is because smaller cities and large towns are both more likely than large cities to be run by Republicans, and also more likely to have bad economies, which (the latter) is a pretty good predictor of crime.

3) The second graph with per-capita gets us closer to correct, the first being “this is just a population heat map” levels of useless. Note all the “blue” cities in red states in the second one. I’ve lived in such a city. It was hopelessly hobbled by the state government—anything “blue” it tried to do was outlawed at the state level as soon as they tried to do it. You can’t really treat those as experiments in Democratic governance.

Republican state government is not preventing Democrat cities from enforcing the law in red states. My point is that criminals are too coddled, not that they are not coddled enough. Preventing democrat cities from coddling criminals even further does not somehow make them less coddled. The Democrat cities coddle criminals as much as they legally can.

Why are so many Republican-run areas way worse than nearly all democratic-run cities, then, as far as violent crime?

I’d say it’s all the poverty in those places, but maybe you’re right and it’s the Republican governments’ fault.

While not a straight line down, all crime has been falling since the 90s. People's perception differs from reality.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...

The largest cities have the most crime, because they have the most people. And most large cities have Democratic mayors.

You could break it down per capita instead, which shows that urban area have the highest violent crime rates, and rural areas have the highest property crime rates.

I haven’t been able to find a comparison of cities with Democratic mayors vs cities with Republican mayors.

> You could break it down per capita instead,

The source provided does break it down per capita, and when done so, the 10 most violent cities in the US, measured per capita, are either democrat (9) or independent (1) controlled.

There are far more cities with Dem mayors than Republican mayors, so comparing raw counts is pretty meaningless. (Similar to counting comparing total homicide instead of per capita.) There are 10 Republican mayors amongst the 50 largest cities, and furthermore, these are heavily concentrated at the low end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_lar...

It turns out the relationship between crime and population is non linear, and that nonlinearity is also true outside of the US and it's political context.

https://crimesciencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...

So, what you're seeing is bigger cities with higher per capita rates due to the underlying relationship between population density and crime. It also happens to be the case that in the US, urban areas strongly prefer Democratic mayors.

I did not compare raw counts, I compared per capita counts.

That's not what I said? Reread the comment, you might learn something.

I did re-read.

Quoting you: "There are far more cities with Dem mayors than Republican mayors, so comparing raw counts is pretty meaningless. (Similar to counting comparing total homicide instead of per capita.)"

Quoting me: "I did not compare raw counts, I compared per capita counts."

I did not learn anything I did not know before re-reading.

You're using raw counts /of cities/ in a top ten list, when the actual leadership of cities is heavily skewed towards Dem mayors. I point out that this is similar to comparing raw counts instead of per-capita.

Thanks for clarifying your objection. Here is a list of the most violent US cities, reckoned per capita, without first selecting for being the most high crime cities in absolute terms: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/most-viol...

Here is the political affiliation of the city governments:

1. St. Louis, MO: Democrat

2. Detroit, MI: Democrat

3. Baltimore, MD: Democrat

4. Memphis, TN: Democrat

5. Little Rock, AR: Democrat

6. Milwaukee, WI: Democrat

7. Rockford, IL: Democrat

8. Cleveland, OH: Democrat

9. Stockton, CA: Democrat

10. Albuquerque, NM: Democrat

11. Springfield, MO: Independent

12. Indianapolis, IN: Democrat

13. Oakland, CA: Democrat

14. San Bernardino, CA: Democrat

15. Anchorage, AK: Independent

16. Nashville, TN: Democrat

17. Lansing, MI: Democrat

18. New Orleans, LA: Democrat

19. Minneapolis, MN: Democrat

20. Chicago, IL: Democrat

Let v = high violence, d = dem mayor, r = republican mayor.

You seem to want to compare P(v|d) to P(v|r). We have little to no data for comparison because there are so few examples of cities with republican mayors. Those that exist are amongst the smaller American cities. This means you need to disentangle the effect of city size on violence rates from the effect of the mayor's party.

I repeat:

There are 10 Republican mayors amongst the 50 largest cities, and furthermore, these are heavily concentrated at the low end.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_lar...

It turns out the relationship between crime and population is non linear, and that nonlinearity is also true outside of the US and it's political context.

https://crimesciencejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...

So, what you're seeing is bigger cities with higher per capita rates due to the underlying relationship between population density and crime. It also happens to be the case that in the US, urban areas strongly prefer Democratic mayors.

You could be right, but I have my doubts that you are.