The Red State Murder Problem Becomes the Blue County Murder Problem

For example, the midpoint of the 2014–2020 homicide data is 2017, thus we choose the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton (D) and Donald Trump (R) as our reference election. [...] Similarly, the midpoint of the first time period of our data set, 2002–2008, is 2005, and thus the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry (D) and George W. [...] As a result, for the county-by-county analysis, Alaska is excluded from the computations while it is included for the state-by-state analysis. [...] For example, the midpoint of the 2014–2020 homicide data is 2017, thus we choose the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton (D) and Donald Trump (R) as our reference election. [...] Similarly, the midpoint of the first time period of our data set, 2002–2008, is 2005, and thus the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry (D) and George W.