Will Joe Biden benefit from falling murder rates across America?

Few politicians fbi talk about violence as much as Donald Trump. In early April, when the former president held his first rally since wrapping up the Republican nomination in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he came onto the stage flanked by uniformed sheriffs. America, he argued, is being overwhelmed by murderous foreigners deliberately sent by hostile governments seeking to empty their prisons at home. Gang members, Mr Trump claimed, are “hiding in bushes, actually, they say”. Overall, he argued, crime rates are “only going in one direction and it’s going to be very bad”.Unfortunately for Mr Trump, but happily for most Americans, what data there are suggest that most crime is indeed only going in one direction—down. In March thereleased (partial) national data showing that violent crime of all sorts dropped in cities, suburbs and rural areas alike in the final quarter of 2023. That confirmed what were already indicating by the middle of last year: that the wave of violence that started almost everywhere across America in the summer of 2020 (when Mr Trump was still president) had in 2022. Murder, both the most damaging and the most reliably counted of all crimes, is now heading back towards pre-pandemic levels.