From a Nathan Smith post on windfalls in land value from immigration (which I recommend), I found an interesting paper by George Hawley entitled “Home affordability, female marriage rates and vote choice in the 2000 US presidential election: Evidence from US counties”. Abstract:

This article tests the hypothesis that differences in the housing market can partially explain why some American counties are strongly Republican and others strongly Democratic, and that this phenomenon can be largely attributed to the relationship between home values and marriage rates within counties. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that, in the 2000 election, George W. Bush did comparatively better in counties with relatively affordable single-family homes, even when controlling for other economic, demographic and regional variables. Using county-level data, I test this hypothesis using spatial-lag regression models, and provide further evidence using individual-level survey data. My results indicate a statistically significant relationship between Bush’s percentage of the vote at the county level and the median value of owner-occupied homes, and that at least part of this is explained by the relationship between home values and marriage rates among young women.

The author finds that a $10,000 decrease in the median home price yielded an additional 0.3 percentage points for Bush in the 2000 election (so, a 0.6 point swing per $10,000). Although I have not reviewed the paper enough to determine whether I agree with its conclusion, it is at least interesting.

Given that zoning is often considered a factor in higher housing costs (see, for instance, Glaeser and Gyourko 2002), I wonder if restrictive zoning laws could have the impact of lowering marriage rates and making voters more leftist. Housing cost wedges can be quite large (in the hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes), so the impact could be sizable. The difference between median owner-occupied housing prices in California and Texas, for instance, is $295,200 ($421,600 – $126,400). If California’s housing prices fell to those of Texas and the effect identified in the paper took place over time, there could be a 17.7 point swing in presidential elections in the favor of the Republican candidate (0.6 times 29.52)! Rough extrapolations are what they are, and certainly not all of the housing price gap is due to zoning, but the effect could be large.

Some types of zoning encourage rather than discourage sprawl (such as free parking mandates), and eliminating those might have contrary effects if they induce more people to live in cities. Nevertheless, zoning could still be a significant factor in political outcomes.