Minnesota residents surveyed in a new MinnPost/Embold Research Poll are less concerned about violent crime as compared to last year’s poll results.
About 31% of 1,519 likely voters statewide surveyed from Nov. 14 to Nov. 17 in the poll, which had a margin of error of +/- 2.6%, listed violent crime as a high priority, compared to 42% of respondents in last year’s poll. The rising costs of goods like groceries and gas, taxes and concern over the overturning of Roe v. Wade were all much more important concerns for survey-takers, as residents saw a dip in crime across the state over the past year.
Though the figure is down from the 2022 results, 34% of respondents in the 2023 poll said gun violence was a top concern for them. Gun violence was not listed as an option in last year’s poll, making respondents’ attitudes around violent crime challenging to cleanly compare year-to-year.
Decrease in overall crime
According to data from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s 2022 statewide crime report, violent crime declined 9%, after pandemic-era surges that resulted in an increase by 17% in 2020 and a 22% increase in 2021.
Last year’s poll results concerning violent crime were more uniform when it came to race and ethnicity. The portions of white respondents and respondents of color that had the issue as a top concern before casting ballots in last year’s midterm elections were identical: 42% – which was also the overall figure.
Though violent crime was a priority for a lower percentage of survey-takers in 2023 overall at 31%, respondents of color were more likely to express concern about the issue this year compared to their white counterparts, with 39% listing it as a high priority compared to 30% of white respondents.
Election season effect
Attitudes about violent crime as a top concern followed similar trends based on respondents’ political affiliations, though overall numbers are down compared to last year.
Respondents who identified as Republican that had violent crime as a high priority saw quite a drop compared to last year, from 61% in 2022 to just 40% in 2023. Less than a quarter of Democrats who responded to the poll had the issue as a top concern with 23%, similar to last year’s 25%.
Decreases were also evident across the state’s different regions, namely in the Twin Cities suburbs, which encompass all cities in the seven-county metro area except Minneapolis and St. Paul. More than half of suburban respondents had violent crime as a top issue last year with 52% while just 35% of suburban respondents listed the issue in 2023.
Minneapolis/St. Paul respondents showed a similar decrease, falling from 48% to 31% this year, while Greater Minnesota saw a smaller drop, going from 33% to 27%.
University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs said a potential reason for the drop by 20 percentage points among Republican respondents, and the decrease in the suburbs, is the effectiveness of campaigns by Republican candidates during last year’s midterm elections. Violent crime was a pillar of the GOP campaign strategy in 2022, causing some respondents to be more aware of the issue before casting their ballots last year, he said.
“Last year, you were picking up the effects of the campaign where you had Republicans really emphasizing high crime, and now, we're not in the campaign season and it's well after the election,” Jacobs said. “The suburban areas were a big focus of the campaign – Republicans thought they could do very well there.”
Dems see gun violence as top concern, not Republicans
Gun violence as a top concern, however, was the complete opposite of years past. Only 8% of GOP-affiliated respondents listed gun violence as a priority while 60% of Democratic respondents had the issue as a priority. The contrast may be due to the amount of homicides in recent years in the Democrat-majority Twin Cities. Minneapolis experienced 97 homicides in 2021 and 80 in 2022, while St. Paul ended 2022 with 40 homicides, the highest that city has ever recorded.
Methodology
The MinnPost/Embold Research poll surveyed 1,519 state voters from Nov. 14-17 in an online poll that had a margin of error of +/-2.6%. Six hundred sixty-four of the respondents were from Greater Minnesota, 597 were from Twin Cities suburbs and 232 individuals in the Twin Cities. The margin of error for the sample by region is +/- 3.8% in Greater Minnesota, +/- 4.0% in the Twin Cities suburbs and +/- 6.4% in the Twin Cities.
For the purposes of the poll, Twin Cities was defined as Minneapolis and St. Paul as well as some peripheral areas, including parts of Edina, Little Canada and St. Louis Park, among other cities.
