Did Our House determine who would occupy the White House? Were mortgages decisive in the making of the president?
In Tuesday's election, the states that backed Barack Obama had four times as many foreclosures and seven times the home-price decline of the states John McCain won.
Coincidence? Don't bet the deed on it.
For all its hard work in doing the housing-vs.-electoral vote math, we have the Orange County Register in California to thank.
The Register found that of the six states with double-digit home-price plunges in the past year, Obama won five of them. In that group, McCain managed to hold only his home state of Arizona.
Our own Florida, previously a Republican-leaning swing state, delivered a solid victory for the Democrat this year. No surprise, really, when you figure we've collectively lost about a fifth of our home value the past year.
The theory holds up well even when you place individual counties under the microscope. In September, Hillsborough had the state's third-worst foreclosure rate. Its 4,663 mortgage defaults affected one of every 108 households. In the previous presidential election, Hillsborough County was staunchly in the George W. Bush camp. This year, fellow Republican McCain never got traction.
Economics isn't everything. The states with the worst poverty and lowest incomes, including West Virginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana and Arkansas, all went for McCain.
So maybe it isn't so much economic distress that drove Floridians to the ballot box but disorientation. Three years ago, we set the economic world afire. Then we saw that worldly wealth, much of it locked up in shingle and stucco, vanish in the flutter of an eyelash.
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