Americans Think These Are the Safest U.S. Cities, Poll Finds

A lot gets made about the perceived safety of cities in the media. In an effort to learn what average Americans really think, a recent Gallup poll surveyed 1,015 adults living in the U.S. to learn how they felt about 16 major U.S. cities. While some perceptions line up with reality, others are far from the mark.

In the study, which was conducted from July 3–27, respondents ranked Dallas, Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Miami as the overall safest cities, with Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit coming in dead last.

Interestingly enough, partisanship played a key in how Americans viewed the respective cities, with Democrats perceiving all but two of the listed cities, Chicago and Detroit, as safe places to live in or visit. Contrasting that data, Republicans found just five cities to be safe, Las Vegas, Miami, Dallas, Boston, and Houston. Democrats also saw Seattle and Boston as the safest on the list, while Republicans steered to Boston and Dallas.

However, a MoneyGeek analysis from earlier this year on the safest cities in America had slightly different findings.

Unlike the poll, the study took recent FBI crime statistics and paired them with academic research on the societal costs of different types of crimes to estimate the cost of crime per capita. The results aren't completely comparable, since that analysis provided a complete picture, rather than a random sampling of 16 U.S. cities. Yet, MoneyGeek found that New York was actually the fifth safest large city overall—not near the bottom, as the poll suggests.

Boston also made that list, but in tenth place, meaning that it's safe, but not as safe as Americans surveyed seem to think.

On the other end of the poll, that study found more accurately that Detroit was the fifth most unsafe, with the bottom four cities—St. Louis, MO, Birmingham, AL, Baltimore, MD, and Memphis, TN—not represented in the Gallup poll. New Orleans, on the other hand, which was seen as safe by 55 percent of poll respondents, came in as the seventh most unsafe city. Meanwhile, Philadelphia, which polled fifth most unsafe among Americans, ranked at the 14th most unsafe city.

Chicago, which was seen in the poll as the second most unsafe, did not crack the top 15 safest or least safe cities in the study.

If nothing else, the poll vs. study presents a somewhat fascinating comparison of perception to reality. You can see the full results of the poll below, based on the percentage of Americans who found each city to be overall safe.

• Dallas: 74 percent
• Boston: 72 percent
• Seattle: 63 percent
• Las Vegas: 61 percent
• Miami: 59 percent
• Minneapolis: 58 percent
• Houston: 57 percent
• New Orleans: 55 percent
• Atlanta: 54 percent
• San Francisco: 52 percent
• Washington, D.C.: 52 percent
• Philadelphia: 47 percent
• New York: 41 percent
• Los Angeles: 41 percent
• Chicago: 27 percent
• Detroit: 26 percent