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Ted Cruz during in interview with Hugh Hewitt claimed that democrats are more likely to commit violent crime than republicans.

He apparently is getting this statistic from a study on three states entitled Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

TC: Now listen, here’s the simple and undeniable fact. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. The media doesn’t report that. What they report, and there’s a reason why the Democrats for years have been viewed as soft on crime, because they go in and they appoint to the bench judges who release violent criminals. They go in, and they do what Barack Obama tried to do, which is appoint a lawyer voluntarily represented for free, a cop killer, to a senior Justice Department position. They go in and fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons. Why? Because the Democrats know convicted felons tend to vote Democrat.

An article on politifact analyses the paper and concludes that Ted Cruz's statement is mostly false. But, there are a host of other online articles which make the opposite claim, (and vice versa).
I tried searching for academic articles, but couldn't find any.

Torsten Gang
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    Democrats tend to live in urban areas. Urban areas tend to have higher crime rates. I would be surprised if there wasn't some effect but I'm not aware of any data. – Loren Pechtel Nov 16 '16 at 05:29
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    @Shadur Where did I imply causation? The question is simply about the relationship, not whether being Democrat causes criminality. – Loren Pechtel Nov 16 '16 at 07:12
  • If I'm not mistaken, convicted criminals in the USA lose the right to vote. Is this question then even answerable? – gerrit Nov 16 '16 at 10:50
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    @gerrit only felons, not all criminals, and afaik not all elections. And not being allowed to vote doesn't stop them being members of one party of the other. – jwenting Nov 16 '16 at 12:34
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    @gerrit "Felons are allowed to vote in most states of the US" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement It varies from state to state and if the right to vote is taken away a felon can often get it resorted. – DavePhD Nov 16 '16 at 12:38
  • I think this answer would be based on assumptions as political affiliations are not tracked for prison populations. Furthermore, a large portion of the US is apolitical, so that would make this assumption even more meaningless. – JasonR Nov 16 '16 at 13:11
  • To answer this question honestly you'd need two sample populations which were virtually identical in terms of demographics, income, education, location etc. but one sample voted Republican and the other voted Democrat. You'd then find that no, Democrats are not more likely to commit crimes. – TheMathemagician Nov 16 '16 at 13:22
  • Politicians or party affiliates? –  Nov 16 '16 at 14:47
  • @TheMathemagician. Why? We know that doesn't exist. We know that criminals are more likely to from demographic groups that overlap in large parts with the Democratic party. –  Nov 16 '16 at 14:49
  • @TheMathemagician: So you have two such sample populations who have been polled? Or are you saying that you answered the question dishonestly? – James Nov 16 '16 at 15:05
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    @KDog - Why? Because if you don't control for the factor, then you can't say anything about that. It might be that poor people are more likely, not Dem vs Republican. Correlation vs cause, and if cause is not the point, why is the affiliation being raised, at all? In order to verify or validate that statement, you have to control for political affiliation not just count raw numbers. That means poor urban Dems vs poor urban Republicans, middle class suburban Dems vs middle class suburban Republicans, rural vs rural, maybe even controlling along racial lines. – PoloHoleSet Nov 16 '16 at 15:32
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    @James - he's talking about statistically controlling for the other variables, and comparing similar groups to similar groups, which is possible without "polling." – PoloHoleSet Nov 16 '16 at 15:35
  • @AndrewMattson: I meant to point out the irony of TheMathemagician answering the OP's question with no references after he/she said "To answer this question honestly you'd need two sample populations ..." – James Nov 16 '16 at 15:55
  • @AndrewMattson: In the question, Cruz didn't say democrats are more likely to commit crimes BECAUSE they are democrats. Therefore, you don't need to control any other factors besides political party to prove or refute the claim. I guess that many criminals vote democrat because they know Dems are softer on crime. – James Nov 16 '16 at 16:05
  • This is a site for analyzing claims skeptically, not asserting other dubious claims... But considering the states in the study, it is not at all surprising at all that higher percentage of Dems are registered, One very blue state, a blue state with a strong independent section and state that hovered around the 50/50 mark for the last few elections. – RomaH Nov 16 '16 at 17:11

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