Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵Thread🧵

A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.

I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.

How come? Follow along: ⤵️

Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.

So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset.

But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.

In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.

When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.

What gives?

It would charitably be described as dubious to think residents really thought crime was less of an issue after a summer of bedlam and increasingly stringent youth curfews in DC.

(An aside, but if kids can’t legally go outside at night, I think the safety “debate” is settled.)

That the numbers are representative of the city are even more questionable b/c certain neighborhoods in DC, as @CharlesFLehman wrote recently in The Atlantic, are devastated by violent crime.

For black men in some neighborhoods, mortality is on-par with US servicemen in war.

That fact makes it curious that the Post oversampled white DC residents, essentially inverting the black and white populations in DC in the poll: a plurality of poll respondents were white, despite black residents making up a plurality of DC.

That matters for the data because, as @FreeBeacon has reported, black and low-income DC residents are a lot more concerned about crime.

Another curious tidbit: when you isolate for respondents who have been or even know a victim of crime, support for Trump’s move doubles.

Does the vast majority of DC not know a crime victim?

Maybe the outlier is with the 600 people interested in replying to a poll in the Post?

Whether this type of poll accurately does what it purports to do matters because this is precisely the type of narrative that catches fire at other outlets.

This tiny sample was treated as definitive across the media. Here’s @CNN.

Is this poll of 600 people really cause for @thehill to declare that DC residents “overwhelmingly” oppose this move?

It’s kind of like taking a single study and elevating it to a definitive truth: bad statistics.

The local @NBCNews affiliate did the same.

Again, these 600 maybe not-so-random residents are doing a lot of lifting.

My favorite was @politico, who touted the “supermajority” of DC residents.

I know this fits your narrative, @JoeNBC, but I’m not sure it captures what’s actually happening on the ground. @MSNBC

And of course, reporters took to X to broadcast this as proof that the policy was a loser and, even less convincingly, that DC is no longer concerned about crime.

@peterbakernyt, if you’re truly interested in what DC residents think about crime, the May polling is instructive.

And the internet’s genius talking heads regurgitated it without chewing, as ever. A BUST, @mmpadellan declared.

The bigger problem is that polls like this give cover for the media to stop reporting on the real newsworthy item: DC has a serious crime problem.

@ScottJenningsKY nails the diagnosis here, about where the city is at and why it matters regardless of local polling:

The @washingtonpost’s previous reporting — no matter how charitably framed — makes clear that crime has gotten out of hand here.

900 juvenile arrests — at least 200 for violent crimes — so far this year.

It isn’t even September!

While opponents proclaim that “crime is at a 30 year low” and that violent crime has gone down relative to the “generational spike in killings” in 2023, murders remain considerably higher in DC than 15 years ago.

(I’ll also just note that 30 years ago was the crack epidemic.)

It helps explain why residents have long seen crime as an enormous problem: even if the numbers are declining (or, are made to be declining).

The earlier piece also provides a once-in-a-lifetime quote, where a DC resident declares that the capital is “a safe city” but said so “on the condition of anonymity over concerns of personal safety.”

Also, as @ScottJenningsKY mentions, the claim that DC crime is “at a 30 year low,” is based on a government assertion that may very well be built on cooked books that deflate violent crime — so that DC leadership could *claim* crime was down.

(Some great actual reporting on DC’s potentially fabricated crime numbers, particularly on violent crime, here from @alanagoodman:)

Could it be that a certain segment of DC understands something everyone else is missing? I suppose.

But it sure seems more likely to me that a bad poll is getting lots of attention to push a media narrative about how bad Trump is instead of how bad DC crime is.