Comparative Analysis of Hate Crime between UCR and NCVS: The Impact of the 2016 Election

• In Event: The Antecedents of Homicide and Hate Crime

Abstract

Background: Researchers have posited that former President Trump created the so-called “Trump Effect” due to his divisive and sometimes hateful rhetoric which emboldened prejudiced individuals. When the majority group of a country feels threatened by the perceived growing power of the minority group, animosity increases, potentially increasing hate crimes. Hate crimes are notoriously underreported to law enforcement. Therefore, this study empirically evaluates the “Trump effect” on hate crime using the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The UCR uses official law enforcement data, whereas the NCVS uses self-reported victimizations, which could potentially uncover underreporting.
Methods: Using the UCR and the NCVS, I use a non-parametric region fixed-effects regression to evaluate differences in hate crime trends between 2010 to 2015 and 2016 to 2020.
Results: Results indicate that official counts of hate crimes according to the UCR reporting increased during the post-election period whereas self-reported victimizations according to the NCVS reporting did not.
Conclusion: These findings indicate that while self-reported victimizations did not increase, official counts did, which means victims may have been more willing to report to law enforcement, or there was an increase in law enforcement denoting certain crimes as hate crimes.

Author

• Hannah Lyden, University of Colorado Boulder