Red vs. Blue: Murder, and the Death Penalty

Blue States have fewer murders;  this is even more true in densely-populated areas.  It's not obvious that the death penalty has any affect on murder rates.

Blue states are definitely ahead here - for example, there are 50% more blue states in the top 10 then one would expect by chance, and the average of the red states' murder rate is 40% higher than that of the blue states.

However, looking at the chart, I noticed something else interesting: all of the safest red states are big states with a few people, i.e., very few people per square mile.  Just for kicks, I tried taking out the 10 states with the lowest population density (fewest people per square mile), and the results are pretty interesting: of the 40 remaining states, 12 of the 13 safest are blue!  20 of the remaining 27 are red:

The average of the red states' murder rate now becomes 67% higher than that of the blue states.

Out of curiosity, I added a column (in the chart in the Data section) to denote whether or not each state has the death penalty.  As I expected, the states without the death penalty generally have the lowest murder rates.  It sure doesn't look like the death penalty is a deterrent.

[1]  Liberality Score for a state is the ratio of the votes received by Kerry to the votes received by Bush in the 2004 Presidential election.  Data from http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/data.php?year=2004&datatype=national&def=1&f=1

[2] Per 100,000 residents From: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004912.html. Source: Crime in the United States, 2003, FBI, Uniform Crime Reports.

[3] From: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004986.html U.S. Bureau of the Census. Web: www.census.gov. 

[4] From: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state/