Will crime impact Texas voters in the 2024 election?

Candidates have campaigned on crime concerns in Texas and across the country, but recent polls show public safety is not as high on voters' priority lists as other issues.

If you ask voters what issues are most important in this election, the majority will say: the economy or the border.

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Others will say abortion rights or democracy.

According to a poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, crime was not on the list of eight priorities.

Even if crime is not a top priority, many are worried.

Tarleton State University criminologist Alex del Carmen says property crime is down in Texas and violent crime is slightly higher.

Nationally, property crime has declined and violent crime has remained stable.

“We count crime in a different way now. And by that I just mean that we now count every case in which a crime is committed, whereas before this was not the case. So the trends are really open to interpretation,” said del Carmen.

Some of the Lone Star State's crime problems are tied to illegal border crossings.

Republicans have worked to make American cities more dangerous with violent immigrants.

“I would like to see the data that they cite because there is absolutely no substantive data that we can look at that can trace it back one way or the other. Now, having said that, in the last few months we've seen in the Metroplex where there have been cases where undocumented individuals have been responsible for violent crimes, and of course those are receiving a lot of national attention,” del Carmen said.

Regardless of who wins the election, del Carmen expects crime will continue to be a local and national problem, but says it won't be because of the statistics.

“I think the general sentiment, regardless of the crime data, is that people are feeling less and less safe in their communities,” he said.