Scholars have demonstrated that preoccupations regarding safety, victimization, and terrorism affect election outcomes, but what about the reverse? Do election results affect how the public perceives public security? We leverage the timing of opinion surveys in Chile about public security to show that respondents have different perceptions about their safety before and after local elections. Results show that shortly after a local right-wing candidate wins by a small margin, respondents declare that their neighborhood, state, and country are less safe than those who answered the same survey a few days before the election. This creates a crime perception gap relative to victimization, which does not vary among groups of respondents. These results are robust to several checks, such as margin of victory, political power turnovers, and pre-trends. The findings directly affect electoral accountability, demonstrating that voter concerns crystalize after they realize who their leader will be.