Cities in Republican-run states dominate the list of American cities with the highest homicide rates, but almost all of those high-crime cities are themselves run by Democratic mayors, and peer-reviewed research finds that a mayor’s party affiliation has no measurable effect on crime. So the question of whether Republican cities have high crime rates depends heavily on whether you measure by state government, city government, or the voters in a given county, and the honest answer in each case is different.
Which Cities Top the Homicide Rankings
An Axios analysis of 2024 FBI data found that 13 of the 20 U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates sit in states controlled by Republicans. Eight of the top ten are in red states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana. Jackson, Mississippi led the country at nearly 78 homicides per 100,000 residents, followed by Birmingham, Alabama at almost 59 per 100,000. St. Louis, Memphis, and Baltimore filled out the top five.1Axios. Homicide Rates Highest in Blue Cities in Red States
This is a long-running pattern. The think tank Third Way, using CDC mortality data, found that the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 was 33% higher than in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in both 2021 and 2022.2Third Way. The 21st Century Red State Murder Crisis Over the full 2000–2020 period, red states averaged a 23% higher murder rate than blue states, and the gap widened from 9% in the early 2000s to more than 40% by 2020.3U.S. Congress. The Two-Decade Red State Murder Problem Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama have held the top three state-level murder rate spots for 15 of the last 23 years.
These states also lead the country in firearm mortality. Mississippi’s firearm death rate hit 28.0 per 100,000 in 2023, compared with 3.8 in Massachusetts and 4.0 in New Jersey.4CDC. Firearm Mortality by State Roughly 76% of all U.S. homicides in 2024 involved a firearm.5Pew Research Center. What the Data Says About Gun Deaths in the US
Blue Mayors in Red States
Here’s where the picture gets more complicated. The high-crime cities inside those Republican-governed states are, for the most part, run by Democrats. Jackson, Birmingham, Memphis, and St. Louis all have Democratic mayors, often in open political conflict with Republican governors and state legislatures.1Axios. Homicide Rates Highest in Blue Cities in Red States Of the 100 largest U.S. cities, 65 had Democratic mayors and 23 had Republican-affiliated mayors as of 2024.6DW. Fact Check: Trump Claims on Crime in US Cities Cities as a whole lean Democratic, and cities are where most violent crime happens, so almost any high-homicide city in America is going to have a Democratic mayor regardless of what state it’s in.
That’s the basis of a counterargument from the Heritage Foundation, which shifted the unit of analysis from states to counties. Researchers Kevin Dayaratna and Alexander Gage lined up county homicide data from 2002 to 2020 with each county’s presidential vote and found that Democratic-voting counties consistently had higher homicide rates than Republican-voting ones. For 2014–2020, they reported 6.76 per 100,000 in blue counties versus 4.16 in red counties.7Heritage Foundation. The Red State Murder Problem Becomes the Blue County Murder Problem
Third Way tested whether that city effect explains the red-state pattern. Even after removing the county containing the largest city from 19 of 25 red states, the red-state murder rate remained 12% higher than the blue-state rate across the full two decades. Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee stayed in the top ten for murder with their biggest cities excluded. Louisiana and Mississippi held the top two spots even without New Orleans and Jackson in the data.3U.S. Congress. The Two-Decade Red State Murder Problem So neither side can wave the other off: cities really do have most of the murders, and red states really do have more murders even outside their cities.
Does a Mayor’s Party Actually Affect Crime?
A study published in Science Advances in January 2025 tested this directly. Researchers from Harvard, the University of Washington Tacoma, the University of Pittsburgh, and George Washington University analyzed decades of mayoral election data across medium and large U.S. cities using regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences methods. They found “no evidence that mayoral partisanship affects police employment or expenditures, police force or leadership demographics, overall crime rates, or numbers of arrests.”8Harvard Kennedy School. Partisanship of Mayors Has No Detectable Effect on Police Spending, Police Employment, Crime, or Arrests
The center-right Manhattan Institute came at the same question from another direction and reached a compatible answer. Its researchers found that the correlation between a county’s or state’s partisan lean and its homicide rate disappeared once standard demographic and economic factors were included. Controlling for age, race, gender, urbanization, and per-capita income wiped out the statistical relationship in both directions.9Manhattan Institute. The Red vs Blue Crime Debate and the Limits of Empirical Social Science
The same Manhattan Institute analysis noted something else worth knowing: rural and small-town counties in conservative states, long assumed to be safer than liberal urban counties, have actually posted higher homicide rates than those urban counties in most years since 2018.9Manhattan Institute. The Red vs Blue Crime Debate and the Limits of Empirical Social Science The “safe red countryside versus dangerous blue city” picture does not hold up in the current data.
Why Blue Mayors in Red States Have Limited Options
One structural factor shapes what Democratic mayors in Republican-governed states can actually do about crime: state preemption. Forty-three states broadly preempt local governments from enacting their own firearm regulations, and a newer wave of these laws attaches personal penalties to local officials who try. In Arizona, a local official who “knowingly and willfully” violates state preemption faces fines up to $50,000 and potential removal from office. In Kentucky, passing a local firearm regulation is a criminal misdemeanor.10Giffords Law Center. Preemption of Local Laws
A Duke University analysis concluded that state preemption has “prevented more gun regulations than the Second Amendment has in over two centuries,” blocking local measures like assault weapon bans, gun dealer oversight, and policies for disposing of crime-scene firearms.11Duke University. Cities, Preemption, and the Statutory Second Amendment For a Democratic mayor in Jackson or Memphis, this is a concrete constraint. Even if local firearm regulation were part of a violence-reduction strategy, state law often makes it legally impossible or personally risky to pass.
Crime Is Falling Nationally
All of this debate is happening while violent crime is dropping sharply across the country. The FBI reported that violent crime fell an estimated 4.5% in 2024 compared with 2023, and murder dropped nearly 15%.12FBI. FBI Releases 2024 Reported Crimes in the Nation Statistics A Council on Criminal Justice report found homicides in major cities fell another 21% in 2025, putting the national homicide rate on track for its lowest level in over a century. Robbery fell 23%, aggravated assault fell 9%, and gun assaults fell 22% over the same period.13Council on Criminal Justice. Crime Trends in US Cities: Year-End 2025 Update
Fourteen states still reported violent crime rates above the national average in 2024. The list was led by New Mexico, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and California, a mix of red and blue states that resists easy partisan sorting.14Stateline. New Federal Data Reinforces Nationwide Drop in Crime Since Pandemic Peak The factors that drive crime in any particular place are local: poverty, economic conditions, housing instability, gun access, policing approaches, and community investment. Researchers across the political spectrum agree on that, even where they disagree on who to hold responsible.