Yes, they very much do. The voter turnout gap by housing tenure is about 20 percentage points (e.g. 70% turnout for owners and 50% for renters). Also the voter registration gap is massive because many renters are not eligible to vote or face hurdles registering due to lack of permanent address. Finally, the people who would benefit from new housing construction in a place like San Francisco are often registered to vote in some other jurisdiction. The people who already live in S.F. have no particular compelling interest in a new apartment tower, but the prospective tenants of those apartments who would vote for them aren't all voters in that city.
And lower income people are far more likely to be renters than landowners. Lower income jobs are less likely to provide time off to vote. Even if mail-in voting is allowed such low-income jobs are also less likely to provide time off to attend city council meetings or public hearings or other such things.
Yup. Census data shows that non voters with incomes less than $20k/year give transportation issues as the reason in 8% of cases, but only 0.1% of people with incomes over $100k give this reason.
