Murders declined at a remarkable rate in America in 2023, with official statistics showing the largest one-year drop in more than half a century. Even more remarkable: This year looks on track for an even greater improvement.

That decline, visible in more recent crime data than what is published annually by the F.B.I., is at odds with how Donald J. Trump has broadly framed crime as rising “through the roof.”

Murders surged at record rates early in the pandemic (starting in 2020 when Mr. Trump was still president). But many cities are now poised in 2024 to fully reverse that rise — a recovery that would be as swift and surprising as the initial nationwide spike in murder rates.

“We are seeing the fastest decline ever recorded,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst with AH Datalytics and a former Upshot contributor, who runs the Real-Time Crime Index that tracks local police data. “Oftentimes, we’re squishy and there’s doubt, or there’s uncertainty. And there’s no uncertainty with this.”

Our understanding of crime data can be clouded by the long lag in official statistics, the fact that many crimes aren’t reported to police, and differences in the multiple methods the federal government uses to track crime (the early pandemic era was also fraught for data collection of all kinds). But murders are different: Nearly every one is counted, and today we have relatively up-to-date counts in many cities and states.