America’s housing crisis isn’t just reshaping where Americans live — experts say it’s reshaping how some vote.
Many of the counties that swung most dramatically toward Donald Trump on Election Day were also among America’s toughest housing markets, according to an analysis of election returns and the NBC News Home Buyer Index. And while voters picked Trump for a variety of reasons, these counties shifted further right than much of the rest of the country.
Across the country Tuesday, counties moved toward Trump by a median of 3.1 percentage points compared to the 2020 election. But in the top 10% of counties ranked most difficult for buying a home, the median shift was 4.5 percentage points. And nearly a third of these counties settled their races by just over a point, meaning real estate woes turned these counties into political flash points.
And it wasn’t just Republican counties voting even more strongly for Republicans. Multiple battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — were home to dozens of these struggling markets.
“This was economics,” said Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, who added that the financial challenges Americans face could have cost Democrats the election.
“Voters were feeling economic hardship to an extent that was not fully appreciated by the Democrats, by the administration — the Harris campaign picked up on it, but it was too little, too late,” Shapiro said. “And the price of housing figures into this heavily.”
The Home Buyer Index tracks the difficulty potential homebuyers face in local housing markets across hundreds of America’s counties and nationwide on a scale of 0 to 100. In October, the nationwide index stood at a very difficult 80.6. But there are several counties where the difficulty is even higher.
In Passaic County, New Jersey, with a population of more than 500,000, voters flipped for Trump by nearly 19 percentage points. It’s also one of the toughest markets in America. In Passaic, where this year’s average Home Buyer Index score of 85.5 puts it among the 20 most difficult markets in the nation, the median home costs $535,000. That amount is nearly double what it was in 2019, and a price tag no longer within the reach of the median family income there.
Nearby in Pennsylvania, Northampton County — which narrowly tipped red with a shift of 3 percentage points — has a similar story. In Northampton, rising home prices and tough competition have driven homebuyer anxiety. Its average index score for 2024 is 79.0, putting it among the 125 most difficult markets. Since 2019, the median home price has risen roughly 75% and market inventory is averaging about a third of what it used to be.
But not all high-challenge housing counties swung toward Trump.
Out on Colorado’s Western Slope, Mesa County did the reverse — moving more than 5 points to the left. While still firmly in Trump’s camp, the red county has nudged toward blue the past two elections, as turnout increased and the Democratic candidate won more of the incoming voters. Since 2020, the housing market in Mesa has ratcheted up to one of the most competitive in the country, with a Competition Index at or near the maximum for most of 2024.
This economic pain is a kind that cuts through demographic lines.
“Housing prices are a big part of the inflation story, especially the most persistent and severe parts of the inflation story,” said Bernard Fraga, a professor specializing in voter turnout at Emory University. “So you can’t separate out the price of housing from voters’ general concerns about the state of the economy.”
Trump’s biggest advantage was that he represented change, Fraga said, while for many Harris represented basically a continuation of the economy that President Joe Biden put into place.
“In the minds of many,” Fraga said, “there was such a strong dissonance between Democrats saying ‘you’re so much better off than you were four years ago’ and the experience of everyday Americans.”