A couple weeks ago, this poll by YouGov asked “Since 1990, would you say murder rates in U.S. cities have…?” The answer:

By the way, the correct answer is “Decreased a lot”, but even if we lump the ‘decreased’ answers together, it’s really bad–three out of four people got it wrong; if we grade more strictly, only one out eleven knew the correct answer. There are two variables, one of which, age, yields the obvious result:

This suggests that a lot of people form opinions about how the world works (or ‘works’) in their late teens and twenties, and they just don’t update for changes in reality (e.g., Donald Trump still thinks the Bronx is burning). Interestingly, race/ethnicity doesn’t appear to affect the results at all. But there’s another variable, and it is surprising (to me, anyway):

Women are much more likely to get this answer wrong. Unfortunately, there are no publicly available crosstabs to break this down by race and gender. But when ‘crime’ becomes a salient issue–or more accurately, when Republicans succesfully fearmonger about crime–it is likely influencing women more than men. And to be clear, influencing them in a direction towards voting Republican. In other words, crime might be a more successful way to chip off women voters than one might otherwise expect.

Regardless, Americans need to get less ignorant about crime.