Home sales based on political affiliation?
May 15, 2008
A recent article from Muckety.com suggested that New York Realtors might want to start marketing certain apartment buildings based on which presidential candidate their residents support.
They found that the top 20 clusters of Clinton — and Obama — supporters live in apartments around Central Park.
In this age of hyper-customization of social interactions, be it through social networks like Facebook or MySpace, on-line dating services or the Huffington Post’s “neighbors” political affiliation search tool, which allows users to find out “whether that new guy you’re seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one,” we decided to crunch some numbers in order to see if the same sort of political NIMBYism exists in the City that Reads.
Since there are far fewer apartment complexes in Baltimore, the question became – what neighborhood should you live in, if you want to surround yourself with like-minded voters, and what does political preference have to do, if anything, with the housing stock of a particular area?
The study was further complicated by the fact that Baltimore’s neighborhoods don’t necessarily adhere to zip code distinctions, and the Center for Responsive Politics, which is the source of our campaign contribution numbers, only compiles donation tallies by postal codes, but our findings, after all that, were interesting.
Some of the most notable factoids:
- Zip Codes 21209 and 21202, which include Mt. Washington, Harbor East, and parts of downtown and Mt. Vernon, and have median home prices of about $300,000, and $270,000, respectively, are going overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Mt. Washington’s Hillary-ites outspent the Barock stars, $44,200 to $29,963. People say that Obama is the candidate of elitists — but not so in Baltimore’s upscale neighborhoods, it seems.
- As the median home price goes down, so does Hillary’s margin. Solidly middle-class zip codes like 21218 (Charles Village, Waverly, Guilford, Barclay, Pen Lucy — median home price $140,000) and 21224 (Canton, Brewer’s Hill, Patterson Park, Highlandtown and Greektown — MHP $180,000) contributed more to Hillary, but only about 20-25 percent more.
- Baltimore’s largest zip code, area-wise, is 21230, and includes the affluent Federal Hill, Ridgely’s Delight, Pigtown and Locust Point areas, but also more middle-class Carroll Park, Westport, and Brooklyn. It is also one of its least populous, at just 30,000 people. They went for Hillary, $25,500 to $17,794.
- Campaign contributions tell some interesting stories about the demographic and socio-economic make-up of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Residents of pricey Mt. Washington, for example, contribute about $3 per person to Democratic Party candidates. In zip code 21229, which includes the more working-class neighborhoods of Edmonson Village, Irvington and Uplands, the average residents spent less than 10 cents on their Democratic candidate of choice.
- John McCain barely registers at all on contribution stats in Baltimore. When he does, though, it’s pretty funny. In white, working-class 21211 (Hampden, Remington, Woodberry, Medford), the zip code in which this reporter resides, Obama leads the pack with $4,505 in contributions, while Hillary languishes at the bottom of the list at $750, behind Ron Paul ($950), McCain ($1,000) and the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association ($1,000), a transit union.
- Historically black West Baltimore, including the previously-mentioned 21229, 21223 (Franklin Square, Poppleton, Union Square, Booth-Boyd), and 21217 (Bolton Hill, Druid Heights, Sandtown-Winchester) combined to support Obama nearly three dollars to one (his $34,932 to Clinton’s $10,081), but the folks over in 21223 made it clear that beer is a bigger priority than politics. They contributed $5,300, more than their gifts to Obama and Clinton combined, to the National Beer Wholesalers Association.
What part of town do you live in, and what do the vinyl signs in windows and on front lawns tell you about your neighborhood’s political character?
ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer
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