Seattle Tops List of Safe Cities

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's annual Crime Poll, conducted Oct. 9-12, 2006, asked Americans to evaluate 16 major U.S. cities as being safe or unsafe. The public is most likely to rate Seattle as safe, while Minneapolis, San Francisco, Dallas, and Boston also receive high safety marks. Detroit and New Orleans are least likely to be rated as safe, along with Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

In this year's poll, 80% of Americans say they consider Seattle "a safe place to live in or visit," putting it above all other cities tested in the poll. Minneapolis is next, rated as safe by 73% of Americans. Roughly 7 in 10 Americans also rate San Francisco, Dallas, and Boston as safe. Houston (60%), Las Vegas (58%), Atlanta (56%), and Philadelphia (53%) are viewed as safe by a majority of Americans.

At the other end of the spectrum, just 26% view Detroit as safe and 28% say the same for New Orleans. In addition to those two cities, more Americans view Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York as unsafe than safe. The public is evenly divided in its views of Chicago, with 47% saying it is safe and 49% saying unsafe.

Perceptions that various cities are safe do not vary much by where a respondent lives in the country -- either by region or by urban, suburban, or rural residence. However, these perceptions do appear to be influenced by a respondent's overall attitudes toward crime. On average, those who express greater fear of crime and view the crime problem as more serious tend to rate the cities as less safe than those who are less fearful or less concerned about crime.

The following table shows how the average safe rating across all 16 cities varies by concern of crime.

Americans' fear of crime and their city safety ratings are related to household income level. Those living in wealthier households (annual household incomes of $50,000 or greater) tend to express less fear of crime and an average of 60% rate the cities as safe, while those living in households with annual incomes below $50,000 give an average safe rating of 45% to the cities.

Trend Data on Safe Cities

Gallup first asked this question in 1990, and has repeated it several times since. The 80% safe rating for Seattle is the highest any city has received, edging out a 78% rating for Minneapolis in 2004. Seattle and Minneapolis have typically vied for the top spot on the list, with Seattle last topping it in 2000.

Since the last measurement in 2004, there has been a significant improvement in the perception of San Francisco as safe (61% to 70%) and significant declines in the ratings of Detroit (33% to 26%) and Houston (67% to 60%). Ratings of all other cities remained about the same.

The full trend data for all cities is shown below:

Other findings of note from the historical data:

Over the years, Americans have increasingly come to view New York and Miami as safe cities. When the question was first asked in the early 1990s, these cities ranked at the bottom of the list. But both showed significant improvement each time the question was asked from 1993 to 2001, before leveling off since then. Even with the improvement, however, more people still view these cities as unsafe than safe.

San Francisco's reputation has also improved greatly over the years. After 44% and 52% of Americans rated San Francisco as safe in 1990 and 1993, respectively, now 70% do.

Like New York and Miami, Detroit showed improvement in its ratings from 1993 to 2001, but unlike those two cities, Detroit's image has fallen back in recent years.

Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. show similar patterns to Detroit, with improved safety scores from 1993 to 2001, but with some decline since then.

Even while the murder rate has spiked in Philadelphia this year, the public rates it as no less safe now (53%) -- and possibly more so -- than in 2004 (49%). However, Philadelphia is rated as significantly less safe now than it was in 2001 (60%).

Survey Methods

These results are based on telephone interviews with randomly selected national samples of approximately 500 adults, aged 18 years and older, conducted Oct. 9-12, 2006. For results based on these samples, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±4 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

17. Now thinking about some large cities, both those you have visited and those you have never visited, from what you know and have read, do you consider each of the following cities to be safe to live in or visit, or not? How about … [RANDOM ORDER]

ITEMS A-H: BASED ON 493 NATIONAL ADULTS IN FORM A

ITEMS I-P: BASED ON 508 NATIONAL ADULTS IN FORM B

A. Miami

B. Los Angeles

C. Detroit

D. San Francisco

E. Atlanta

F. Dallas

G. Seattle

H. New Orleans

I. New York

J. Washington, D.C.

K. Chicago

L. Philadelphia

M. Houston

N. Boston

O. Minneapolis

P. Las Vegas