Crime, Policing, and Voter Turnout in Chicago's 2023 and 2019 Mayoral Elections

Politicians and pundits commonly tout campaigning on crime and policing as an effective strategy for winning elections. Yet, scholars have only recently started examining the contributions of both variables to voting. The available research shows that scholars disagree, however, about whether crime and policing, independently or jointly, increase or decrease voter turnout and whether race or ethnicity condition these relationships. We examine these issues with a spatial analysis of voter turnout in the 2023 and 2019 mayoral elections in Chicago. We find that, at the electoral precinct level, turnout is negatively associated with violent and property crime and with police stops. In contrast, it is positively associated with police misbehavior complaints. These relationships are net of spatial error, spatial lags, and common predictors of voter turnout. We also find that crime and policing jointly influence turnout and that several of the crime and policing relationships interact with the percentage of Black and Hispanic residents.