Electoral impact of the rental market: evidence from Israel

This paper studies housing tenure and voting patterns during the period from July 2013 to July 2023 in Israel, where the rental share of housing units increased from 24% to 29%, and six national elections for parliament took place. Using detailed neighbourhood panel data on rental units share and electoral outcomes, I find that switching a neighbourhood's housing stock from fully owner-occupied into fully rental causes the turnout rate to decrease by 8–10 percentage points. These effects are interpreted with the aid of census and survey data, a fixed effects model and a control function approach. The findings contribute to understanding how housing market dynamics influence democracies.