The Impacts of Local Housing Markets on U.S. Presidential Elections: Via the Collateral Channel

Chi‐Young Choi, David Quigley and Xiaojun Wang

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2025, vol. 87, issue 6, 1197-1213

Abstract: Housing is an important asset for many households in the United States. Nevertheless, our understanding of the relationships between housing markets and election outcomes remains somewhat limited. Examining the influence of local housing markets on U.S. presidential elections in the past three decades, this paper presents evidence that a faster rise in county‐level house prices increases the share of the county's vote that goes to the incumbent party. That is, greater support for the incumbent party in counties where housing prices outpaced the national average. This effect, however, exhibits significant variation among counties and becomes more pronounced in regions where a larger proportion of homeowners with mortgage debts. These results support the “collateral effect” channel as the primary mechanism through which local housing markets affect U.S. national elections.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12673

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:obuest:v:87:y:2025:i:6:p:1197-1213

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0305-9049

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Christopher Adam, Anindya Banerjee, Christopher Bowdler, David Hendry, Adriaan Kalwij, John Knight and Jonathan Temple

More articles in Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics from Department of Economics, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().