Figure - available from: The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics
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Voting rates by precinct for Marion Barry in the 1994 election for mayor of the District of Columbia. Source: District of Columbia Board of Elections
Source publication
The hypothesis that minority voters act in their economic self-interest in supporting municipal candidates of their own race or ethnicity has been tested using changes in municipal spending and employment. However, governments affect voter welfare in many other ways, particularly in the provision of quality public services. This paper exploits a na...
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Citations
The electorate is concerned with personal financial and macroeconomic conditions in addition to policy issues and tends to hold the incumbent party accountable when voting. The performance of the United States’ largest asset class, residential real estate, should influence individual voter behavior. According to economic voting theory and the “homevoter” hypothesis, homeowners will be more supportive of policies that are perceived as beneficial to their property value. We investigate this relationship in the US residential real estate market by evaluating the effects of heterogenous county-level housing market performance on voter behavior in national presidential elections and find counties with superior house price performance in the four years preceding an election are more likely to “vote-switch” to the incumbent party. Counties with relatively inferior house price performance in the four years leading up to the election are more likely to switch their vote from the incumbent to the challenging party. The relationship is strongest in the years closest to an election and in counties that rank in the higher quartile of housing price performance. Election outcomes in “swing” counties are particularly vulnerable the local real estate economy. To our knowledge, this is the first study to link heterogeneous local residential real estate performance over a series of national election outcomes.
