The overwhelming majority of Memphis and Shelby County residents agree local crime is a major problem right now and most of them say it’s making them weigh their options about where they live, according to a new survey.

Given recent crime data and community discussions on the topic, The Daily Memphian commissioned the poll to gauge city and county residents' perceptions of local crime.

The Daily Memphian contracted with Mississippi-based Blueprint Polling to conduct the survey. Blueprint asked the same set of questions of two groups: those living inside the city limits and those living in Shelby County but outside of Memphis.

The Daily Memphian: Poll on crime shows residents want more from leaders

The margin of error for the survey was less than 2%, BluePrint managing partner Brad Chism said.

Demographics from both groups closely match the demographics of the communities in which they live. The poll includes responses from 2,988 people who responded from May 10 to 25.

The survey found that crime is causing 38.6% of Memphis respondents to consider moving away from the Memphis area. Another 11.8% of city residents said crime has caused them to consider moving to a Memphis-area suburb.

For Shelby County respondents, 52.6% said they are considering leaving the area entirely because of crime.

Respondents to the Shelby County survey did not indicate which Memphis suburb they lived in, just that they lived outside the city limits, Chism said. 

Most respondents from both groups agreed crime is a major problem, including 86.3% of city residents and 86.7% of county residents. 

Chism considered those numbers the most interesting aspect of the survey results.

“The city is not on one side of the Mississippi River and the county is on the other,” he said. 

Chism said respondents from both likely agree on issues around crime because county residents also spend significant amounts of time in the city.

City and county residents also were in agreement on the level of crime occurring in Memphis now compared to five or more years ago. For both groups, 61.9% said it is “much higher.”

Respondents were given choices of priorities when it comes to crime reduction.

For city residents, 44% selected harsher sentences for violent and repeat offenders as the top priority, the most popular choice. For the next highest priority, the most popular choice was more community policing at 30.9%.

County residents picked the same choices but by different margins: 60.9% said harsher sentences for violent and repeat offenders should be the top priority and 37.9% said community policing should be the next highest priority.

Respondents were taken from local voter registration lists and The Daily Memphian email subscriber database. They either filled out the survey online or took it over the phone. 

Chism said BluePrint looked at census data for race, age and gender and weighted certain indivduals’ responses to get them as close as possible to the actual demographics of the areas of Memphis that were surveyed.

“It’s typical survey methodology to make sure no group is undersampled or oversampled,” he said. 

For the city, 65.4% of respondents were Black; 22.6% were white; 8.8% were Hispanic or Latino; and 3.1% were another race not mentioned. Also, 55.8% were female.

For the county, 47.1% were Black; 43.6% were white; 6% were Hispanic or Latino; and 3.4% were another race not mentioned. Also, 58.9% were male.

As far as crafting the questions, he said that it was a “collaborative experience.”

He said typically, as with The Daily Memphian survey, a client will give questions to BluePrint based on what it wants to find out. Blueprint will then tweak the questions to make sure that answers aren’t skewed to one demographic or another. 

“We massage questions to minimize bias and increase statistical reliability,” Chism said.

Survey respondents say stricter gun laws and more police officers are needed to help combat crime

Respondents agreed that stricter gun laws are needed to reduce crime. Only 12.5% of Memphis residents said no new laws or regulations are needed while 25.9% of Shelby County residents said reform isn’t needed.

The poll also asked respondents their views about the Memphis Police Department. 

Most respondents from both groups agreed that more officers are needed to patrol the city and that both MPD leadership and individual officers are doing a good or average job. 

“Many more” police officers are needed to patrol Memphis, according to 65.6% of city respondents and 74.2% of county respondents.

Less than 2% of Memphis residents said fewer (0.9%) or a lot fewer (0.8%) officers should be patrolling the city.

Most respondents from both groups have not been victims of crime themselves, but most knew someone who has been in the last year. 

According to the survey, 70.9% of Memphis respondents knew someone who was a victim of crime in the last year. The number was slightly higher for Shelby County at 71.8%.

‘We did all that we could to take the politics out of this’

Chism also runs a partisan voter contact firm called Chism Strategies, which “helps elect Democrats and advance progressive causes,” according to its website. 

He said that his work with Chism Strategies should not cast doubt on the unbiased nature of the two surveys.

“We did all that we could to take the politics out of this,” he said. 

He focused on the survey’s methodology, stating that there were no references to certain political viewpoints within the survey.

BluePrint has done surveys for municipalities, including the cities of Atlanta and Meridian, Mississippi, and several school districts. 

Eric Barnes, CEO of The Daily Memphian, reiterated that the intent of the survey was to be nonpartisan. “The Daily Memphian selected BluePrint because of their capabilities with data analysis and reaching a truly representative sample of the community,” Barnes said.