Will Joe Biden benefit from falling murder rates across America?

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 the fbi released (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 city-level data 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 crested in most places in 2022. Murder, both the most damaging and the most reliably counted of all crimes, is now heading back towards pre-pandemic levels.