Decarceration in the US has been almost exclusively a Dem-voting county endeavor, despite rhetoric abt bipartisanship.
In a sample of 27 states (holding ~75% of the ppl in prison), Democratic-leaning counties were responsible for ~90% of the decline.
And ironically, CA makes the GOP look good:
If we drop CA, which adopted a massive state-level change no other state attempted, then ... in my sample of 27 states, ALL the decline is driven by Dem-voting states, since on net GOP counties pushed prison pops up (tho their urbanest counties saw drops).
The net GOP decline is a CA-GOP decline.
I define a county's Dem-vs-GOP-ness by the average share of the vote the Dem POTUS candidate got from 2008-2020.
I'm sure there are other ways one could do this. I'm skeptical that they would change the fundamental results here.
Decarceration is local, and it's not bipartisan.
(Also, dumb typo: their share is 74% in 2009 and 78% in 2019, which has to be the case, since I also said their rate of growth was LESS than the national ave, so obv their share of the overall pop has to grow, not shrink.)
