Does California have lower homicide rates than some southern US states?

As protesters in Los Angeles denounced United States President Donald Trump’s deportation policies, sometimes leading to clashes with law enforcement, Republican and Democratic politicians sparred over who has the bigger crime problem: blue states or red states.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, took to X to challenge three elected Republican officials who had offered posts critical of California and Newsom’s handling of the recent protests.

Newsom’s comparisons are close to accurate because he worded his assertions carefully to refer to the homicide rate. California has more homicides than any state, but it also has by far the largest population, and using the rate – which refers to homicides per 100,000 people – makes it possible to compare states on an even footing.

Some Newsom critics replied to his post by arguing that the numbers the governor used are unreliable because California has some of the lowest rates of reporting crimes to the FBI’s data collectors.

But this argument is a red herring: Newsom’s political office confirmed to PolitiFact that his data are from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That means his statistics are not subject to concerns about low reporting rates (a problem that commentators have exaggerated).

California fares less well against these three states when measuring overall violent crime, which includes homicides, rapes, aggravated assaults and robberies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes data showing the number of homicides per state as well as the rate of homicides per 100,000 people. The latter metric allows a comparison of bigger states to smaller states.