How Housing Affordability Is Polarizing Voters

Housing affordability has challenged Americans for several decades, but what's new is how polarizing it has become across the political landscape. According to Home Economics, a provider of real estate insights and data, renters are increasingly on the left side of the political spectrum, while homeowners are now more likely to align with the right.

This trend can be observed in the campaigns and ideologies of current politicians. Recently elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for instance, ran his campaign on affordability for renters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently proposed a 50-year mortgage as a way to lower monthly housing payments. While both plans focus on affordability, each appeals to their respective bases.

There is no filter—education, race, or religion—that comes close to showing the 14-point ideological split we see between renters and owners.

Renters are more left-leaning across the income spectrum, across ages, and in all but 7 states. So it makes complete sense for Mamdani to champion renters and challenge NIMBYism, while Trump focuses on easier homeownership financing.

This is a political hot potato and we’re wary of putting our thumbs on the scale. But our view—formed through countless analyses and grounded in academic literatured—is that unequal access to housing primarily reflects unequal incomes.

Proposed solutions that sidestep this reality—freezing the rent, boosting supply, improving construction productivity, or extending mortgage terms—will merely keep affordability at the top of the agenda, and certainly won’t overcome the force of income inequality that’s been gaining strength since Darwin observed a housing crisis in 1836.