Who’s getting crunched by foreclosures and what it may mean for ’08 race
Dante Chinni
Posted: 04.30.2008 / 8:29 AM EDT
In an election where the economy figures to be the No. 1 issue, the struggling housing market is the key reason why. Tuesday’s headlines brought news of falling home values and a rising number of home foreclosures as consumer confidence shrank.
The latest foreclosure numbers reveal just how large the crisis is.
None of Patchwork Nation’s 11 community types has skated through the downturn unscathed, according to RealtyTrac data. Foreclosures climbed by at least 20 percent in each one, when comparing figures from March 2007 with those from March 2008.
That doesn’t mean that all the community types are feeling the crunch to the same degree, however, and the differences among them are likely to have tangible effects on the vote in November.
An analysis of the foreclosure numbers finds that the middle class and upper-middle class are suffering the most – along with the younger communities. The three community types most affected by the housing crunch are younger than the national county average and sit above the mean in household income.
What tops the list? “Monied ’Burbs,” which had a foreclosure rate of roughly 19 per 100,000 homes this past March. These wealthy counties have been important in every recent general election, and they are likely to be again in 2008.
As a whole they were closely split between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush in 2004 – the difference was only 0.2 percent. The high foreclosure rate suggests that if the candidates are going to target these voters, economic proposals that offer a change of course may be most popular. That may favor the Democratic candidate as he or she will represent the challenger party at a time when people are looking for a new direction.
“Industrial Metropolis” counties have a foreclosure rate almost as high (18 per 100,000 homes in March). These big cities tend to side with Democrats by a large margin and are expected to do so in 2008.
Following closely behind are the nation’s “Evangelical Epicenters,” a group of counties that goes heavily for Republican candidates. Since “values voters” populate these areas, it is unlikely they will flip parties.
The trends in the foreclosure rate could also be a factor in the fall campaign. Three community types in particular have seen big jumps over the past year.
“Tractor Country,” the nation’s most rural counties, has seen a sharp climb in foreclosures, more than 110 percent when comparing March 2007 with March 2008. But those numbers are somewhat deceptive. Even with that sharp increase, the overall rate is still low – only 3 out of every 100,000 homes was in some stage of foreclosure in March 2008.
But the counties that in some ways have seen the most dramatic spike are the nation’s “Boom Towns.” The number of foreclosures in these places jumped more than 93 percent when comparing March 2007 with March 2008. The rate, too, is fairly high at 13 foreclosures per 100,000 households – the next highest after “Evangelical Epicenters.”
Both the high rate and sharp increase of foreclosures in “Boom Town” counties have particular significance for the 2008 race. Such counties should be ripe for Sen. John McCain. They were closely divided in 2004, but they trended slightly rightward as President Bush’s percentage of the vote increased to about 50 percent that year from about 48 percent in 2000.
However, if the foreclosure numbers continue to rise here, Senator McCain’s campaign might find winning these counties more difficult. Bad economic times usually lead voters to consider a change in leadership. (Consider the elections of 1980 and 1992.) What’s more, McCain has tied himself to many of the economic policies of the Bush administration, particularly the president’s tax cuts. McCain has staked out a separate position on housing. After initially saying it wasn’t the federal government’s job to bail out “those who act irresponsibly” in the mortgage crisis, he later proposed a federal program that would help individual homeowners restructure their mortgages.
Meanwhile, foreclosures have also increased in the nation’s “Military Bastions” by roughly 89 percent, even though the overall rate remains relatively low.
McCain can take some comfort in the fact that those counties vote reliably Republican – and that may be doubly true in a year when the GOP presidential candidate is a war hero.
