Chinese Foreign Real Estate Investment and Local Voting in US Presidential Elections.

This article examines the political implications of rising Chinese foreign real estate investment (FREI) in the United States, focusing on its influence on local voting patterns in recent U.S. presidential elections. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits a 2013 exogenous shock from China’s anti-corruption campaign and proxy measures of Chinese FREI exposure based on the local presence of Chinese international undergraduate students, the study finds that greater Chinese FREI exposure led to a statistically significant reduction in Democratic vote shares in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. The effect was stronger in counties with larger initial white populations and weaker in those with higher shares of college-educated residents, while local economic improvements or housing market factors did not systematically explain the voting shifts. These results suggest that nativist sentiments and pro-conservative reactions, rather than pocketbook or sociotropic voting based on economic self-interest, primarily drove the electoral consequences of Chinese FREI in the U.S.