When I glanced at the graphic accompanying this article, the pattern seemed familiar. Take a look at the map yourself, and see if you see the same pattern in that map that I did. (The map is on the left side of the article, and is labeled "Worth Less".) If you are puzzled, perhaps because you haven't been studying US vote patterns for more than forty years, take a look at this map for some hints.
In general — please note that I said, in general — the areas that have the highest levels of negative equity are the areas that vote Democratic, that elect Democrats to state legislatures and city councils.
There are exceptions. The heavily black areas along the Mississippi river and the Hispanic areas along the southern border vote Democratic, but do not have problems with declining equity (or even equity, some might quip). But on the whole the declining equity map is also a map of Democratic strongholds, Los Angeles and other urban areas on the West coast, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and so on.
Allowing for those exceptions, the negative equity map looks like a map of Obama's supporters, except for southern blacks.
Why might this be so? Here's my speculation, and it is no more than speculation, but it is consistent with a number of academic studies. Democrats, especially culturally left Democrats (latte-sipping, arugula-nibbling Democrats, as opposed to beer-drinking, hot-dog-eating Democrats), regulate housing markets, causing shortages. These shortages cause prices for homes and condominiums to rise rapidly. Once prices have been rising rapidly for several years, many begin to believe that they will always rise, and soon you have a bubble, with speculators trying to make quick profits, and home buyers trying to beat price increases. Eventually, the bubble pops, the prices drop, and the foreclosures start.
If you have a better explanation for the relationship, let me know.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(Unfortunately for my thesis, the county that they chose to illustrate the negative equity problem, California's Merced, gave more than 56 percent of its vote to George W. Bush in 2004. But the housing bubble seems to have been mostly created by people from outside the county, and the land rules in Merced, as in the rest of California, are mostly set by the legislature, which has been run by Democrats for years.)
Posted by Jim Miller at August 24, 2008 02:26 PM | Email ThisThis negative equity phenomenon has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the party that is strongest in the particular county. Instead, it was caused by lenders making nothing down, no income required loans in housing markets that were active several years ago.
In active housing markets, these ridiculous loans pushed up demand for houses to artificial levels, as people who really couldn't afford a house were seeking to buy one, or to buy a more expensive house than they could really afford. As a result, house prices were pushed up to artificial levels, and the housing supply also increased as new houses were built in those areas.
Adjust the house prices back down to the true market value, and a high percentage of houses are now worth less than the mortgages owed on them.
This is a matter of lax federal regulations and lax federal oversight. Many of these loans involved federal loan fraud -- laxly prosecuted by the Alberto Gonzalez DOJ, which was far more interested in getting "loyal Bushies" into U.S. Attorney positions. All of these mortgage loans were made under a REPUBLICAN president, and most of them made while the REPUBLICANS still controlled Congress.
Posted by: Richard Pope on August 24, 2008 03:00 PMAren't most of the banks and investment firms who made these ridiculous mortgage loans run by and owned by REPUBLICANS?
No.
This negative equity phenomenon has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the party that is strongest in the particular county.
Right, sure. Certain policies known to cause housing shortages and decrease the value of property have nothing whatsoever to do with the availability and value of property.
This is a matter of lax federal regulations and lax federal oversight.
Right, sure. Which regulations do you think should have been in place? What oversight was missing?
Many of these loans involved federal loan fraud -- laxly prosecuted by the Alberto Gonzalez DOJ
Example?
All of these mortgage loans were made under a REPUBLICAN president
False, of course. You're saying not a single of these bad loans was made 8 or more years ago? That's nonsense.
and most of them made while the REPUBLICANS still controlled Congress.
Under regulations made when the Democrats controlled Congress, and without action in the two years since the Democrats regained control of Congress.
Certainly a greed factor on the part of the lenders contributed to the problem. Do you think the government could have had anything to do with the problem? As a result of the lawsuits accusing lenders of "red-lining" (which was never proven to have happened) The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they didn't want to send money. Lenders had to relax their criteria because they were afraid of being accused of avoiding neighborhoods with non-white inhabitants.
Posted by: Alan on August 24, 2008 03:31 PMIt used to amaze me that so many large businesses would donate to a party that vilifies profit as much as the Democrats do. I've since seen the light. Big business loves big government.
When you monopolize a market regulations have little effect on the bottom line. It is only short term. What it does is create a barrier to entry for any new competition.
Posted by: Vince on August 24, 2008 03:54 PM2) This map, however, puts the colors in their proper places---red designating all the democrat-leaning counties, which is hugely more appropriate. IF I were drawing that map, I would assign the colors in just this way. If you have to assign blue/red colors, then I like THIS map. It's as things should be!
Posted by: Michele on August 24, 2008 03:59 PMThat reminds me of an utterly amazing thing John Kerry said (well, not so amazing if you've listened much to John Kerry). In a debate with Newt Gingrich about global warming, Kerry made the argument that Newt just wanted to help evil corporations by saying we'd be better off with private companies solving our energy problems.
Then Kerry turned around and said that he was right that government should be in charge, by saying that corporations agree with him.
It was one of those, "are you serious?" moments that happen a lot when you listen to John Kerry.
What corporations want, most of them, is, of course, money. One of the best ways to make money is to get the government to give it to you. This is what Democrats represent. Small businesses tend to favor Republicans far more than large ones, because they not only are much less likely to be given handouts from the governmnet, they also tend to be -- as they are run by entrpreneurs, who ENJOY the PROCESS of starting and growing and maintaining a business -- more interested in making money than being given it.
And in this state, with the B&O tax -- one of the most punitive taxes in the nation against new and small businesses -- there's an even more pronounced anti-Democratic effect among such voters.
You can see this in action in Democratic efforts to push people into "high density" "urban villages".
Or take the light rail system. It's a 2.8 billion dollar hole (or valley) to nowhere...on routes better served by buses, taxis and cars. What it does do is let builders sell people teeny tiny "townhomes" for a king's ransom.
It's not like there's any shortage of land, but Democrat control from Seattle to Olympia prevent jobs from being spread to cheaper, lower cost areas.
The Democrats are basically aristocrats who do no work, but who depend on serfs to be taxed and let their party continue. The Gregoires-Simses-Nickles ride on the backs of the business people and the poor, extracting monies at every twist and turn.
That is why I have created a brand new symbol for King County -- based on a figure who is more in tune with the very nature of the place. No, he is not another famous civil rights leader...but quite the opposite:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47446064@N00/2794599800/
Posted by: John Bailo on August 24, 2008 04:38 PMSo it's permanent now.
Orwell was prescient in applying the name of the Ministry of Truth to such truth-inverters. No better description can be found for the MSM.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on August 24, 2008 05:51 PM"...a recent study by Jan Brueckner and Ann Largey notes, Americans who live in lower-density -- that is, more suburban -- neighborhoods have more friends overall, are more likely to spend time with their neighbors, and are more likely to belong to social clubs or social groups than their urban counterparts."
p. 172
Posted by: John Bailo on August 24, 2008 06:45 PMNo, Orwell wasn't talking about this. These are just colors, just symbols, that have no meaning but that which we give them. Orwell talked about denying actual truths for frauds, not merely swapping out the symbols we use to identify things.
And further, as noted, it was BUSH who chose red and GORE who chose blue.
Perhaps a more appropriate color for the Democrats would be yellow?
As both Florida and Ohio will go for Obama.
And also based on that map, so will Colorado, Virgina, the Carolinas and maybe even Georgia.
Time for you to panic.
Because either you are brilliant and there will be a landslide, or you are an idiot and you've let the whole world know.
Posted by: bedir than average on August 24, 2008 08:05 PMThey are permanent. They've become too much a part of our national vocabulary, so even the overwhelming majority of laypeople identify the colors those way. The two parties have adopted the colors and market them. There's too much behind the colors now to change it. You can say you dislike it, you can fight it, but you won't win the day.
Of course nothing is permanently permanent, but ... it's about as permanent as the elephant at this point.
"bedir":
I had no such theory. You're confused.
The colors used to go the other way many years ago. When did they change?
Posted by: Richard Pope on August 24, 2008 10:16 PMRepublipukes pee all over themselves chanting that de-regulation is the answer for everything. Let big business control everything. Crush small businesses. De-regulate till we have only one Fascist Compamy/State!!! The GOP dream.
We are now watching what de-regulating the banks, and getting rid of usury laws does. SNL Crises Round 2. You would think after Reagan's $350,000,000,000 first SNL bailout the morons would have figured it out. Hell it is just money we can't give to welfare moms right? 350 BILLION for Reagan's insane policies. It's ok. He robbed Social Security for it.
Prosecuting bankers? Bush's Justice Department (a criminal enterprise in itself) looks the other way, and only prosecutes innocent Democrats, and ignores guilty Republipukes. See Don Siegelman. See Jeff Sessions. See Ralph Reed. See Carl Rove. See Grover Norquist.
No wonder all those E-Mails went missing.
Posted by: All Facts Support My Positions on August 24, 2008 10:22 PMAn early marriage of red and blue with the two major parties is noted in the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas History Online, which describes a color-coding system developed in the 1870's to help illiterate and Spanish-speaking voters navigate English-language ballots in South Texas. Local Democratic leaders called their party the Blues; Republicans chose to be the Reds.
in her book "My Story," Geraldine A. Ferraro recalled watching her 1984 vice presidential bid founder on the television screen. Mr. Reagan's victory this time around was rendered in both flavors. "One network map of the United States was entirely blue for the Republicans," she wrote. "On another network, the color motif was a blanket of red."
By the 1990's, the color scheme was becoming a bit more formalized - at least on network and cable television. But other news outlets continued to vary.
Time magazine had favored Democratic red and Republican white in the 1976 election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, then reversed those colors for Reagan and Carter in 1980. By 1988, the magazine was using Republican blue and Democratic red, and it stayed with that motif even through the 2000 election, which has colorized the nation's political language in precisely the opposite way.
The Times, which published its first color presidential election map in 2000, followed the networks, although Archie Tse, a graphics editor who made the choice, provided a different rationale: "Both Republican and red start with the letter R," he said.
The National Atlas of the United States, published online under the auspices of the United States Geological Survey at nationalatlas.gov, still resists that trend: Bush counties are blue; Gore counties red.
People still associate color with all sorts of things - red is hot, blue is cold," Professor Simons said. "But when all is said and done, these are semantic associations that probably have little to do with color per se."
But Leatrice Eiseman, the director of the Pantone Color Institute, says those semantic associations are fairly entrenched - at least in the West. Blue, Ms. Eiseman says, is cool and calming, and typically represents "those things in nature that are always there for us, like water and the sky," she said. Red, in contrast is "exciting, dynamic, high-energy."
"It can also be a symbol of danger and bloodshed," she added, although Republicans who find themselves uncomfortable at the hot-and-twitchy end of the spectrum may take comfort at the ascension of their color on Valentine's Day. "Red is also a very sensual color," Ms. Eiseman said.
Really people? Is research that hard?
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on August 24, 2008 10:45 PMA few of us are taking our wallets and heading to Portland tomorrow. Kisses WA socialists!
God, I love it when factless plays right into my hand!
I direct you to a post on the public blog regarding Directive 10-289 for Indie Businesses
What is this real-life version of Directive 10-289, you ask? It has the very Orwellian tag of the "FDA Globalization Act of 2008."
In a nutshell, this shining socialistic example of government interference would force all cosmetic/personal care businesses to pay the federal government an annual $2,000 "registration fee" -- for which neither the business owner nor consumer derive any benefit -- in addition to the accompanying bureaucratic time-suck of extra paperwork to fill out every year.
It's a truly shameless, anti-free trade stance taken by certain Congressional representatives -- who, by the way, receive large campaign donations from some of these same mega-companies -- to protect the interests of their corporate sponsors.
...Read the rest and be very afraid.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on August 24, 2008 10:53 PMMerced County picked Bush over Kerry 56% to 42% and hasn't voted for a democrat for president since 1976. Similar numbers were seen in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, areas experiencing some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.
Posted by: Smoley on August 24, 2008 11:01 PMBecause the thesis itself is pure hogwash.
Great joke though.
Posted by: BA on August 25, 2008 12:28 AMRagnar, exactly, Time was one of the few holdouts for the Red = Dem, Blue = GOP. But even they have now changed, because after 2000 the Red = GOP, Blue = Dem became so entrenched in our collective political language that it became confusing for their readers to stick to the other scheme.
Posted by: pudge on August 25, 2008 07:49 AMThe language of an intellectual infant.
Posted by: Rick D. on August 25, 2008 08:26 AMDo you think that (lack of facts) goes to Evergreen college? (-:
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on August 25, 2008 08:46 AMWell, despising collectivism as some of us old-timey Americans do, why spend one's days playing herd mentality? I'm old enough to remember the word 'reds' applying precisely to the muderous gangs that preferred class warfare to democracy, and received Soviet funding (which lasted into the 1980s) to bulk up their PR 'activism' so the MSM in the US could fawn over their cute street theater.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on August 25, 2008 12:09 PMWell, despising collectivism as some of us old-timey Americans do, why spend one's days playing herd mentality?
I have another question: why spend one's days fighting a losing battle over something that is merely a symbol? It's just a color. It's arbitrary.
Looking at the NY Times map, it seems to fit better with areas with the highest median family income, 65K+. Postulating that areas that had the largest negative equity might have had real estate that was over-valued and taken a dive since.
http://www.raconline.org/maps/mapfiles/income.jpg
The red/blue map actually fits better with the map showing which areas have more high school level education.
http://www.raconline.org/maps/mapfiles/education.png
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/15676/
Posted by: Just asking on August 25, 2008 11:09 PMIn other words, we don't have enough data to make the comparison, there could be large swaths of negitive equity in smaller areas that aren't covered on the NYT graphic.
Lets be intellectually honest about this, Jim may be correct that there are fewer homeowners with negative equity in more conservative areas, but we don't have the proof in this story.
Posted by: Dan on August 26, 2008 09:38 AMDan is describing the map for what it shows - data only in the areas sampled.
The leap to assume data for the majority of the country not sampled is a guess, nothing more, nothing less.
Better to stick with the discussion as to the proper colors to represent the two major parties...
Posted by: BA on August 26, 2008 01:30 PMYou did find a correlation between being shaded on the map, and voting Democratic.
The trouble is, the map is of areas covered by metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Essentially, you've established that metropolitan areas are more likely to vote Democratic.
Beyond that, I haven't crunched the numbers. But I'm going to say chances are that you'll see correlations to:
1. Areas of boom housing developments, which tend to be Republican; and,
2. Areas where people are poor and tend to buy on equity, which tend to be Democratic.
In either case, I imagine the areas facing the highest foreclosure rates are probably more Republican than county average. All that considered, the argument that Democrats are more likely to drive foreclosures is really spurious. I'm inclined to think it's the other way around, but, really, does it matter?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :)
Posted by: Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson on August 29, 2008 08:43 PM