If the voters think they are out of control then they are out of control . Also we are still in far worse shape than we were in 2019 and that’s what matters at the end of the day
You can argue about how interpret data, but numbers and numbers and don't care about human feelings. It's also quite known from psychology that people tend to believe even the most outrageous lies and false narratives as long as they're repeated often enough. A vast majority of the Republican Party and right-wing "news" outlets are working overtime to promote these narratives. That's also why a lot of people think the Republican Party is fiscally conservative despite the numbers telling otherwise. The Democrats should be faulted for not responding effectively most of the time to such claims.
Fundamentally though inflation , crime and maybe even illegal border crossing are worse than they were in 2019 so to voters they are still bad . Like someone isn’t gonna take solace at the fact that crime is not as bad as it was in 2022 when it’s still far worse than it was in 2019 so to voters crime will still feel out of control .
It's fascinating to see people crowing that murders are down 12% from 2022 when 2022 itself was 34% higher than 2019. A smattering of random factoids didn't paint an accurate picture in Vietnam and it still strains credulity today.
2020 had a huge spike too from 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/10/27/what-we-know-about-the-increase-in-u-s-murders-in-2020/
How much of this rise in crime has come from ahem..... what happened in 2020 ?
I am sure quite a bit had to do with things that happened in 2020, but the interesting thing is that three years later we are not yet back to 2019 numbers. It's not like 2001, which saw a surge due to a freak incident that immediately returned to normal the next year.
Experts were saying back in 2020 that the effects of the pandemic in every sector would still be felt until at least 2024. This is a surprise only to those who didn't listen to them.
