They get pretty few actual votes. They can only win elections through voter suppression and by maintaining the blatantly undemocratic US election system. In any democratic system they would have been wiped out decades ago.
The real estate thing is definitely one of the major reasons. But there’s more to it than that. Managers become managers because they’re good at power games, not because they’re competent. Those games become much harder or even impossible when people aren’t physically present. Many of them also enjoy bullying people. That’s also harder to do on a video call.