Map - 2008 Hate Crime Rate by State

The map below shows the reported number of hate crimes per million residents in 2008, color-coded by state. The data is from the FBI's latest hate-crime report, which came out earlier today. Wisconsin, with a rate of 16.3, is in the low-middle of the range, but comparable with neighboring states. This is a significant change from a few years ago when Wisconsin had a extremely low hate crime rate, although that was probably due to under-reporting. Click on the map for a larger version.



To be included as a hate crime in the FBI statistics, a crime must first be reported to a local law-enforcement agency, which then makes a determination if it is a hate crime. That agency must then report it to the FBI, either directly or through the state's Attorney General or Department of Justice. Not all law-enforcement agencies report data to the FBI, and many that do probably do not accurately characterize hate crimes. Hate crimes also tend not to be reported or investigated in jurisdictions that that are hostile to the victimized minority.

There are obvious discrepancies in the map. Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia appear to vastly under-report hate crimes. There are a number of possible explanations, but given the clear state-by-state differences, the most likely is that hate-crime investigation and reporting by local law-enforcement agencies is not supported, or perhaps even discouraged, by the Attorney General and/or the Department of Justice in those states. Other states, Delaware for example, appear to have anomalously high hate-crime rates. This could be real, but it could also be the result of particularly intensive hate crime reporting and investigation efforts.

UPDATE: Some links and additional info:

FBI 2008 hate crime statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html
Caution on conclusions: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/variables.html

Some of the reporting on the new hate crime statistics, like this story from Fox, have been somewhat irresponsible. Fox's headline is "Reported Hate Crimes Surge in 2008". Reported hate crime did rise by 11%, but as Fox actually points out in the story, this could be due simply to improved reporting, not an actual increase in crime. The discrepancies in the my map clearly show that hate crime reporting is, at best, extremely uneven across the country.

To make the map I used Index Mundi's map creator. Very highly recommended.

"The Last Time We Vote For Bigotry"

My title is from a Huffington Post article in which the author argues that gays should never again back a presidential candidate, like Obama, who doesn't support gay marriage. While you can debate the effectiveness of such a strategy, it looks like it's already happening. Exit polls from November's election show a startling trend: Gays have deserted the Democratic party at rates far higher than any other group.

The chart below, from pollster.com, shows shifts in presidential voting patterns compared to 2004. Groups below the horizontal line voted more Republican in 2008 than in 2004. While Obama did amazingly well with almost every demographic, there are three groups where he lost votes compared to Kerry: "Small town" (-6%), "Decide last three days" (-8%), and "Gay" (-11%).

(Click on the chart for a version you can actually read)

Although I don't have the data to prove it, my guess is that this is a result of Democratic-leaning gays not voting, rather than gays as a group becoming more Republican. If so, this likely occurred more in safe states like California than in swing states like Wisconsin.

This trend will probably continue, and perhaps even accelerate, until the Democratic Party finally elects a presidential candidate who openly supports gay marriage. While it's unlikely to affect the top of the ticket, it could have an impact in close races further down the ballot.

In the past Democrats have almost always paid a price for supporting gay rights. In the future they will increasingly pay that price for not doing so.

The Most Homophobic County in Wisconsin

Yesterday Wisconsin overwhelmingly voted for a broadly drawn state constitutional amendment that bans both gay marriage and anything "substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals", meaning civil unions and possibly even domestic partner benefits. The results were 1,259,489 (59.4%) in favor of the amendment, and 860,996 (40.6%) opposed.



(Click on map for larger version)

Red is support for the marriage amendment, blue is opposition. And the single most homophobic county in Wisconsin is ... Florence County! That's right, Florence County, in northeast Wisconsin, wins the prize as the very worst of the worst, a true bastion of hate and intolerance. Although, as you can see from the map, the competition was mighty tough, with a half-dozen other counties close behind.

Only Dane County voted to oppose the amendment, although La Crosse County was evenly split, and Iowa, Eau Claire, Portage, and Menominee Counties weren't too bad. Sadly, Milwaukee County supported the amendment 55% to 45%.

The CNN exit poll had some interesting results. The cross-tabs show that support for the amendment was most strongly correlated with church attendance, ideology, and support for George Bush. Democrats opposed the amendment 65% to 35%, and Republicans supported it 84% to 16%. Independents split right down the middle.

The results in Milwaukee County are explained at least in part by the fact that support depends on race, with blacks significantly more likely to favor of the amendment than whites, although, strangely enough, CNN has deleted that data from the poll. It was there last night, but now it's gone.

The lone bright spot in all this is that support depended strongly on age ranging from 40% for people under 30 to 67% among people 59 and older. Which means that in twenty years or so we might actually have a shot at overturning this disaster...