According to this map from USA Today, 35 counties in the United States account for half the nation’s home foreclosures. Almost every one is in the Sun Belt besides a handful in the Midwest.
What is noteworthy, however, is that many of the areas hit the hardest voted for Bush in 2004 and then Obama in 2008, including the I-4 Corridor, exurban Washington and the Inland Empire.
What does this mean (if anything) for the future of electoral politics?
(Note: Those 35 counties are outlined in red)
(h/t: Discourse)
Jay
10 March 2009 at 10:55 AM
The problem with this article is like so many in the mainstream media it does not give you a clear idea of what counties they are talking about. No where is there a list of the counties in the article.
I checked the Realty Trac web site and found they were really reporting on metropolitan areas not counties. So it is really 35 metro areas, some of which contain more than one county like Riverside-San Bernardino CA.
Sloppy reporting here.
a clay
12 March 2009 at 6:55 PM
How about drivers – what correlates to the default rate? Household income? Other demographics? Housing cost per square foot? Employment sectors?
Can’t we have an article that doesn’t bring everything back to voting for Obama?
timothy j. saine
16 March 2009 at 9:21 AM
If you would superimpose a election map of the Blue/Red counties, you will see an almost exact correlation of
liberal/democratic voters and a extremely high rate of foreclosures -which leads to two conclusions:
1.) obama is paying back his constituencies at the expense of all working people
2.) democratic voters are too stupid/lazy to read, therefore too stupid to vote.
We should impose a citenship test before allowing anyone to vote –
a basic, simple question such as “name the three branches of government” WOULD DISQUALIFY 75% OF ALL DEMOCRATIC VOTERS.
JEK
20 March 2009 at 7:21 PM
The comment that “you will see a correlation” between democratic voters and forclosures” is unproven in your comments.
In California- Orange, San Bernadino and San Deigo counties are all traditionally fairly conservative counties yet all have high forclosure rates. The same holds true in the central valley. The fact that they are now voting democratic probably reflects the fact that they were already feeling the stress of the mortgage crisis. Florida is a conservative state with Republicans at all levels of government.
There was a time when I could have a conversation with conservatives and discuss facts. Patrick at least seems reasonable. But most conservatives just seem to foam at the mouth. Too bad. It would be nice to have a two party system which was driven by positive personalities who actually could discuss ideas and see (Even if they disagreed) what the other side was saying. If we can’t aknowledge the validity of the “other side’s” exisistence then there is no longer any need for democracy.
Everyone just seems to blog on to sites which agree with their prior positions- I think our society is the poorer because of it.