Obama’s win tied to home price declines, foreclosures

By: PAUL JACKSON
November 5, 2008

The OC Register’s Jon Lansner has a great post up this morning that looks at the states Obama carried versus McCain, and the relative price declines and foreclosures in each, using data from First American CoreLogic. In total, he suggests that states representing nearly 80 percent of the nation’s foreclosure mess went to Obama:

	Obama	McCain	No call
States (+DC) won	28	22	1
Electoral votes	349	174	15
Avg. home price	-9.4%	-1.3%	0.7%
Foreclosure share	79.3%	19.3%	1.4%

And that may be the hidden subtext here of the entire election: It was these states that saw Democratic voters turn out in droves, despite the fact that McCain performed nearly as well as Bush did in 2004 in terms of Republican support.

I’d personally suggested for nearly six months that the nation’s housing mess would largely determine this election, irrespective of which side of the aisle you’re on. Lansner suggests that while it won’t get the press, the state of the nation’s housing market was a driving factor in the outcome seen Tuesday evening.