Credit: Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash
While violent crime has diminished as a priority for Minnesotans in recent years, a stark divide between voters’ political affiliations and their perception of safety in the Twin Cities persists, according to a new MinnPost-Embold Research poll.
Only about a quarter of 1,616 likely voters across the state surveyed between Sept. 4-8 had violent crime as one of their top four priorities, which is down from 31% in last year’s poll and 42% in 2022. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points.
Public safety has fallen as a prominent election issue when compared to the past two major elections in 2020 and 2022. The 2020 murder of George Floyd by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was fresh in voters’ minds, and many Democrats called for law enforcement reform while many Republicans expressed unwavering support for police. Spikes in violent crime during the coronavirus pandemic that ebbed and flowed in the years that followed also played a role in how voters cast their ballots, but issues like the rising costs of goods and the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court appear to be more important for voters this time around.
“Crime, particularly violent crime, is not a top issue. I mean it gets a lot of attention and Republicans in particular talk about it a lot, but we’ve got a whole lot of other issues that are getting far more attention,” University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs said in an interview. “For Democrats who might have been worried about crime, and particularly Minneapolis, it’s not appearing on the list for top concerns among Minnesotans.”
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