Housing affordability is set to be a dominant issue of the 2024 presidential elections, and high home prices are fueling much of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with the overall economy. But most Americans’ current inability to afford a house could actually benefit the current occupant of the White House in key swing counties come November, an academic study recently found.
The study, “Housing Performance and the Electorate,” analyzed home prices and election results across every county in the continental U.S. over each of the last six presidential elections. What it found was that swing counties where home prices increased significantly in the four years leading up to an election were more likely to vote for the incumbent candidate, while counties with a poorer price performance were more likely to flip for the challenging party.
The results offer insights on how home prices could influence this year’s presidential race at a time when national home values are up more than 45% compared to four years ago, according to data from the Freddie Mac House Price Index.
“Individuals vote based on economic well-being,” Alan Tidwell, coauthor of the study and associate professor of finance at the University of Alabama, told Fortune. While many factors go into this metric, Tidwell and his coauthors “thought that the U.S. 's largest asset class, residential real estate, should be a significant factor that might impact which direction voters choose at the polls,” he said.
Between 2000 and 2020, 641 counties across the U.S.—or 23% of all counties—switched the party they voted for at least once, the study found. In those “swing counties,” every 1% increase in home values over the four years preceding an election correlated to a 0.36% increase in the likelihood they voted for the incumbent.
Even if a county had not voted for the incumbent in the prior election, a 1% increase in home prices increased the likelihood they flipped their vote to the incumbent in the next election by 0.19%.
The relationship between home prices and voting behavior was strongest if home value increased the most in the last year before an election, the study found, and high prices were even more favorable for incumbent parties if they were running a repeat candidate.
Eren Cefci, the lead author of the study, said they chose to focus on swing counties in particular because their voting behavior was the most sensitive to changes in home value.
“We found that 77% of the time, counties do not change their voting over the six election periods,” Cefci, an assistant professor of finance at Austin Peay State University, told Fortune. “They vote for the same party regardless…so they don't react to economic factors.”
Of the seven states considered to be up for grabs in the 2024 race, four—North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona—saw home prices surge faster than the national average over the last four years. In Georgia and North Carolina, prices have risen more than 60% since 2020.
Taken on their own, the results of the study suggest the rise in home prices over the last four years could favor Biden in swing counties come November. But Cefci warned the findings are just one reference point of many when it comes to how voters think about elections and the overall economy.
“If people are satisfied with [their home values], they might reward the incumbent party for this,” he said. “But there are many other factors that should be taken into consideration.”
To be sure, in a historically unusual economic recovery, it remains to be seen whether good fortunes of homeowners will balance out the pessimism of nearly everyone else. Less than 40% of Americans believe Biden will do the right thing for the overall economy, according to a Gallup poll released this month. For the second year in a row, a record-low 21% of respondents said it was a good time to buy a house, according to the same poll, while 70% expect prices to keep rising.
On balance, high home prices have spelled out more bad news for Biden than good. Prospective homebuyers need to make roughly $50,000 more to afford a home than they did pre-pandemic, and the country is short between 2 million and 7 million homes, keeping prices high. In a study commissioned by Redfin this year, almost two-thirds of homeowners and renters said housing affordability made them feel negatively about the economy.
