Swing State Housing Scorecard: Who Wins the Presidential Election with Real Estate Voters?

Guest contributor RealtyTrac says:

Much like any presidential election in recent memory, the 2012 contest boils down to a select group of swing states that could go either way based on myriad factors impacting the voters in those states.

One of those factors is the housing market, which although a taboo subject for the candidates in all three debates, nevertheless should be a key consideration for many voters, whether homeowners or not.

We wanted to know which way voters in the swing states would vote based solely on the state of the housing market — and ultimately which candidate would ultimately win the election under that real estate-centric scenario.

With that goal in mind, we took a closer look at five key housing market metrics in each of the eight swing states as identified by CNN and others. In a series of articles this week, we've awarded the electoral votes of each of these swing states to either Romney or Obama based on the admittedly not-iron-clad assumption that voters will pick Romney if the housing market in their state is worse off than four years ago (change is needed) and will pick Obama if the housing market is better off than four years ago.

The outcome was Romney winning the larger number of swing states and electoral votes in swing states, but Obama winning enough of the swing states to push him over the top to narrowly win the election by an electoral vote count of 274-264.