White Democrats most likely to support defunding the police even amid violent crime

A new research paper found that White Democrats were more likely than non-White Democrats to support defunding the police even in areas experiencing rising violent crime.

The research, published by the free-market Manhattan Institute think tank, explored whether defunding the police was a “luxury belief” – a position the privileged can afford to adopt to signal their virtue because they do not have to suffer the consequences.

The study “finds that in areas with high levels of violent crime, support for defunding the police generally falls for all groups except white Democrats. This is true even when socioeconomic, demographic, and political background variables are held constant,” the report reads.

An initial analysis of data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study showed that socioeconomically better off Democrats – Whites and Asians – were more likely than Blacks and Hispanic Democrats to support reducing state spending on police, a 10% reduction in police presence on the streets or both.

The study then controlled for different factors, like socioeconomic status (SES), strength of party identification and demographic indicators like age, income, marital status and level of education.

Strength of party identification brought White and Asian Democrats closer together on defunding and depolicing, as they were the most likely to identify as “liberal.” However, controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors reduced the gap between Asians and the other non-White races.

The study then assessed the role of local violent-crime levels using data at the zip code-level from CrimeGrade.org and county level from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data set.

Researchers discovered, shockingly, that higher local crime made White Democrats even more likely to support defunding and depolicing while non-Whites became less likely.

“Local violent-crime rates influence the defunding and depolicing attitudes of non-White Democrats more than they do for White Democrats. In the lowest-crime zip codes, support for defunding and depolicing is virtually the same for white and nonwhite Democrats, but in higher-crime zip codes, White Democrats are more likely to support and nonwhite Democrats more likely to oppose these policies,” the report said.

When looking at differences between non-White groups, the analysis showed Asian Democrats’ opinions were the most likely to be negatively impacted by local violent crime. All other variables held constant, an Asian Democrat has an estimated 76.4% change of supporting defunding and depolicing in zip codes with the lowest relative levels of violent crime but 36.9% chance in zip codes with the highest – a near-40-point difference.

A notable exception among non-Whites was Hispanic Democrats, who were more likely to support reducing police presence on the streets in counties with higher local violent crime.

Zach Goldberg, Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and author of the study, said in an email that his best guess about the difference was that, in the minds of Hispanic Democrats, the police are associated with immigration enforcement and deportations.

“Hispanic Democrats are a curious case. As you refer to, in some of the models, violent crime does not appear to have meaningful effects on their support,” Goldberg said.

“In others, though – particularly the county-level effects on support for cutting the number of police on the street – the effects are large and significantly negative. The results are thus more inconsistent for Hispanic than other non-White Dems.”

Goldberg warned that his findings on crime level and support for the policing policies made it difficult to draw conclusions about Hispanic Democrats.

“On balance, though, when adjusted for SES and other background variables, the effects are generally negative (though not always “statistically significant”). Nonetheless, the inconsistency of the results does caution against any hard or strong conclusions here,” he continued.

“My sense is that the effects are, in fact, negative. And that they are also negative for Hispanics in [albeit smaller sample] data from 2021 (see the chart below) increases my confidence in this conclusion. Still, more research/data is needed before we can know for certain.”