The American dreamers picked President-elect Donald Trump's vision over that of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The American dream of buying a home ostensibly helped bring Trump back to the White House, just as he had repeatedly projected in his nearly 1,000 campaign rallies in his politicking career — most of which that aired on Newsmax.
While the American electorate shifted a median of 3.1 percentage points from 2020 to 2024 for Trump, the top 10% of counties ranked most difficult for buying a home shifted toward Trump by 4.5 percentage points, NBC News reported.
Notably, nearly one-third of those counties were decided by around 1 percentage point.
"This was economics," Columbia University professor Robert Shapiro told NBC. "Voters were feeling economic hardship to an extent that was not fully appreciated by the Democrats, by the administration — the Harris campaign picked up on it, but it was too little, too late.
"And the price of housing figures into this heavily."
The swing states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania that all flipped back to Trump this week had dozens of those top 10% of markets where it is toughest to buy a home, according to NBC's Home Buyer Index.
The nationwide index rated it a very difficult 80.6 on a scale 1-100 on difficulty of buying a home in America right now under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and Harris' proposed giveaway of $25,000 to first-time home buyers failed to resonate with voters in those most difficult areas.
"Housing prices are a big part of the inflation story, especially the most persistent and severe parts of the inflation story," Emory University professor Bernard Fraga told NBC. "So you can't separate out the price of housing from voters' general concerns about the state of the economy."
Harris' status quo versus Trump being a change agent made a difference for voters concerned about the American dream of buying a home.
"In the minds of many, there was such a strong dissonance between Democrats saying, You’re so much better off than you were four years ago and the experience of everyday Americans," Fraga said.