An interesting election parallel
Jonah Freemark shared this chart:
The shift in vote share is relatively uniform across regions except at very high urbanization, it becomes highly negative.
Now, look at this. This is the change in home prices between January 2021 and September 2024.
I would guess there are at least 2 things going on here.
Covid created really bad negatives for urban economies, and in the typical fashion, urban ZIP codes were “voting their pocketbook”.
The decline in urban home prices was related to a shift in migration patterns. Before Covid, cities were depopulating because poor residents were moving away due to high costs. After Covid, rich residents were moving away because of Covid-related loss of urban amenity value, opportunities for work-from-home shifts, less need to be at the office every day, etc.
So, the vote shifted because the voters left.
That is a very interesting graphic. I am trying to explain it.
If the declining vote for Democrats in urban zip codes is due to out-migration, this would imply that the relocators were disproportionately Democratic voters, but somehow they no longer voted Democratic after they moved. That seems unlikely to me. Or maybe they were so dispursed to different zip codes, so they have little effect on the overall vote.
It has been my experience that those who have moved from big cities are less likely to be Democrats, not more likely. I think this means that a significant portion of Democrats in urban areas switched their voting preferences from Democrats to Republicans.
I think crime, inflation and immigration are the most likely causes, though housing may have as well.
Interesting correlation. I will add some color. Within the City of San Francisco we saw depopulation due to 1) work from home: people seeking less expensive housing no longer tethered to an office, and more space. 2) schools were closed in SF the longest.
That also had a Jane Jacobs effect: it took pedestrians and eyeballs off the streets. We experienced an increase not in violent crime, but in property crime. Turns out organized groups from beyond the city were casing houses. They would break into unreinforced garages and steal e-bikes. Porch piracy rose. Car and home break-in’s day and night were received by an apathetic police force.
This did more to drive outmigration. For families either children, work from home was untenable. Private schools, already a fortune, had inflated tuition costs.
Public schools were markedly depopulated. 2 school years after Covid, the district was insolvent and under threat of state takeover.