Democrats bucked historic trends at the polls this week on several fronts—including on issues of crime and safety. Voters overwhelmingly saw through the fearmongering and rhetoric about crime that dominated election ads and debates in 2022. Despite a staggering amount of money spent on crime ads in the final weeks of the campaign, many Democratic candidates were able to overcome and even counter Republican attacks portraying them as “soft on crime.”

Crime/safety is one of the few kitchen table issues that spans partisan divides. Everyone, regardless of how they vote, wants to be safe. For too many decades, though, knee-jerk assumptions about voter preferences on criminal justice resulted in “tough-on-crime” policies that drove mass incarceration yet failed to make communities safer. What voters actually want from their elected leaders to prevent crime and deliver safety, according to pre-election public opinion research commissioned by Vera Action, are solutions—not scare tactics.

The midterm election results suggest that the nation is ready for a new path forward. Many Democratic candidates in competitive districts outperformed expectations, and a national poll released weeks before Election Day found that 80 percent of voters —across the political spectrum—support justice reform.

Yet, clearly issues of crime and safety still mattered. Several close races for governor, attorney general, and even Congress, hinged on these debates. Reform prosecutors, drug policy ballot initiatives, and other justice reform measures prevailed in many, but not all, states. While voters overall rejected the crime scare tactics, Democrats in places that recently passed high-profile reforms were taken to task if they failed to convince voters of the evidence—that these policy changes are consistent with public safety
To better understand how crime and safety played out at the ballot box, Vera Action commissioned Hart Research Associates to conduct a one-of-a-kind online national exit survey from November 6-8, 2022, of 1,505 actual voters across the political spectrum. Here are the five key takeaways that emerged.

The $157 million bet by Republicans on ugly, Willie Horton-style crime scare tactics during election season to take down Democratic candidates did not pay off. Many factors were at play for why, unlike in years past, crime fearmongering as a national campaign strategy failed the GOP.

According to exit polls, and consistent with Vera Action’s crime and safety exit survey results, other issues—the economy and abortion—rose to the top for most voters. In Vera Action’s exit survey, 3 out of 5 survey respondents said this year’s election campaigns did not affect their awareness of crime as an issue. But exit polls also found that crime and safety mattered most to 11 percent of voters in making their voting choices.

When asked if crime was either the “single most or one of the most important issues,” 69 percent of voters in Vera Action’s national exit survey said they considered the issue of crime when casting their vote. While the importance of crime ended up ranking lower than many expected going into Election Day, it still made a mark—especially in tight races.

Leading into the election, a Gallup poll found that a record-high percentage of Americans—56 percent—believe that local crime has increased. Vera Action’s more nuanced look at voter concerns about crime and safety reveals that this issue is a high priority for key segments of the Democratic base, including 73 percent of Black women voters and 58 percent of Black men voters.

Yet voter concerns about crime and safety do not equal more support for the policies that have fueled mass incarceration and fail to deliver safety. In Vera Action’s summer 2022 polling of almost 4,000 likely voters from across the political spectrum, conducted before ad spending on crime ballooned, the vast majority—74 percent—agreed that the safest places in the country prioritize investments in jobs and economic prosperity, good schools, housing, and health care over more police, jails, prisons, and harsher sentences.

Even after an election season of unprecedented fearmongering about crime and safety, support for preventing crime before it happens, and not just reacting after, persists. When respondents to Vera Action’s national post-election exit survey were asked to make a binary choice between: doing more to get “tough on crime, like having stricter sentences for people convicted of violent crimes, maintaining strong bail laws to keep potentially dangerous people in jail, and giving police more support and resources,” or choosing to “fully fund things that are proven to create safe communities and improve people’s quality of life, like good schools, a living wage, and affordable housing, and do more to prevent crime by increasing treatment for mental health and drug addiction and cracking down on illegal gun sales,” 53 percent picked the solutions-oriented preventative approach compared to 47 percent for the punitive one. Among Democratic voters, preference for a solutions-oriented approach jumped to 76 percent. Among Black and Latinx voters, support for a solutions approach was an overwhelming 64 percent and 60 percent respectively, compared to the alternative.

Crime and safety played an outsize role in a few races where sustained fearmongering about recent criminal justice measures—namely bail, drug policy, and policing reforms—began well before the midterm election season.

New York’s 2019 bail reform law has been under attack for three years, despite its success. The law has benefited more than 8,000 New Yorkers who returned home to their families, jobs, and communities instead of awaiting trial in jail, and no credible evidence has been found to link the reform to increases in crime. Nevertheless, the multi-year fearmongering campaign has been effective at undermining public support for the law. In sharp contrast to polls elsewhere, New Yorkers ranked crime as the most urgent issue going into Election Day. Those concerns played out at the polls, where incumbent Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul secured only a narrow 5-point victory over her Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin, who spent millions attacking Hochul for failing to repeal bail reform.

In Oregon, Measure 110, a 2020 ballot initiative that voters approved by 17 points to decriminalize drug possession and increase funding for drug treatment services, reduced arrests and saved lives within a year of implementation. Arrests for drug offenses declined by 60 percent and more than 16,000 people accessed treatment instead of facing prosecution for drug use. Yet again, despite evidence of success, Measure 110 and the aftermath of racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 loomed large in the Oregon gubernatorial race, where two out of three candidates committed to repealing the reform if elected. As of two days after Election Day, the exceedingly competitive race for the governorship has still not officially been called, but Tina Kotek, the one candidate supportive of Measure 110, is currently predicted to prevail.

A similar story repeats itself in Minnesota, where Attorney General Keith Ellison led the high-profile prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd. On the campaign trail, Ellison’s opponent for attorney general attacked him relentlessly for his support of policing reform and Question 2, a 2021 charter amendment to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a department of public safety that won 44 percent of the public’s vote but ultimately failed. Again, Ellison prevailed in the race, but by less than one percentage point.

The lesson here is not to run away from justice reform measures which, despite the controversy, remain popular with voters across the political spectrum. It is for candidates to own the issue of safety and to message clearly and confidently that justice reform is consistent with safe neighborhoods and communities. Months after campaigning on other issues, and under pressure from her party to speak up on crime, Governor Kathy Hochul finally delivered an affirmative vision on safety with a late-October election ad: “A safe walk home at night, a subway ride free of fear, a safer New York for every child—that’s what Kathy Hochul is working for as governor, and she passed a comprehensive crime plan to make it happen… . You deserve to feel safe, and as your governor, I won’t stop working until you do.” Delivering that message early and often on the campaign trail could have changed the margins of the gubernatorial race and impacted the outcome of downballot congressional and local races where Democrats overall performed underwhelmingly in a deeply blue state.