Survey and electoral evidence shows that crime and public safety did remain a major political theme in U.S. politics for several years after mid‑2021, even if it was not always the single top issue.

• In the 2022 midterms, Pew found about six-in-ten registered voters (60–61%) said violent crime was “very important” to their vote, putting it in the top tier of issues alongside the economy, gun policy, health care, and education.(pewresearch.org) Pew also noted that candidates nationwide released thousands of ads focused on violent crime.(pewresearch.org)
• Multiple 2022 polls (Rasmussen and others) reported that around 80% of likely voters expected crime/violent crime to be an important issue in the elections, with roughly half calling it “very important.”(sharylattkisson.com)
• Going into the 2024 presidential election, Pew found violent crime remained one of the leading issues, especially among Republicans: 76% of Trump supporters said violent crime was very important to their vote, ranking with the economy and immigration for that bloc.(pewresearch.org) A 2024 Rasmussen poll likewise found 79% of likely voters expected crime to be important in the presidential race, with 45% saying very important.(floridadaily.com)
• Crime and public safety continued to shape state and local politics, e.g., California’s 2024 Proposition 36 (reversing parts of Prop 47 and increasing penalties for certain theft and drug crimes) passed by a large margin, signaling that crime policy was still salient to voters, and mayoral races in cities like Oakland and New York prominently featured public safety plans.(en.wikipedia.org)

Countervailing data show that when people are asked for the single “most important problem,” crime usually ranked below the economy, inflation, the government, and immigration (e.g., Gallup in 2023 found only 3% named crime as the top national problem).(news.gallup.com) By 2025, concern about crime as an “extremely/very serious” national issue had started to decline, though it still remained substantial.(washingtonpost.com)

However, the prediction only claimed crime would be a huge, reverberating issue for the next few years, not that it would remain the single dominant concern indefinitely. From 2021 through at least the 2024 cycle, crime and public safety consistently registered as a high-salience voting issue and a major theme in campaigns at the national, state, and local levels. On that basis, the prediction is best judged as right.