Some on the right
argue that murder rates in red states are higher because of the blue cities in those red states. Of course, blue states have more blue urban areas than red states. That is what makes most states blue. The fact is that murder rates have
increased in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
But to answer these critics, we performed an exercise to give red states a special boost. For this exercise, we removed all of the murders in the county with the largest city for 19 of 25 red states.
In six rural red states home to no cities with large numbers of murders, this calculation was not possible based on available CDC data.2 Blue states would get no such advantage. But even with the largest city removed from red states, the Red State murder gap persisted.
Over the course of the full 21 years between 2000 and 2020, the Red State murder rate was still 12% higher than the Blue State murder rate, even when murders in the largest cities in those red states were removed. And the murder rate was still higher in 18 of 21 years.
Between 2010 and 2020, even after removing New Orleans and Jackson, Louisiana and Mississippi continued to hold the number one and two spots for highest murder rates. Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee were still consistently in the top 10 after removing their largest city.
In 2020, the states with the highest murder rates stayed roughly the same after making this change: Mississippi in first, then Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia.
