Crime and Urban Politics

Cities in advanced democracies are commonly portrayed as centers of cosmopolitanism and electoral strongholds of the left. I argue that the issue of crime can reshape urban politics by providing opportunities for right-wing parties as issue-owners of crime to make inroads among urban electorates, thereby weakening progressive parties' dominance over cities. Focusing on Germany, I first present evidence from a geocoded survey (N=3,083) showing that concern about crime is higher among both right- and left-wing voters in urban areas compared to their rural counterparts. A text analysis of a large corpus of political ads (N=35,359) posted on Facebook by German political parties and complemented with qualitative evidence further suggests that the center-right CDU/CSU strategically responds to voter concern about crime in cities, while left-wing parties pay little attention to this issue. In a final step, I demonstrate that the center-right's “urban strategy” pays off electorally: A neighborhood-level panel analysis of Berlin shows that crime increases the CDU's vote share in the state parliament elections, while decreasing electoral support for the Greens -- the party most closely associated with an urban, cosmopolitan electorate. On the micro-level, a candidate-choice conjoint experiment among German voters in large cities (N=2,086) demonstrates that the center-right can attract a substantial share of progressive voters from the Social Democrats and the Greens through law-and-order stances. Overall, this paper shows that the rightward shift of advanced democracies is not restricted to rural areas or small towns but extends to urban centers usually perceived to be progressive strongholds.