Issue Ownership and the Vote: The Effects of Associative and Competence Ownership on Issue Voting

Abstract

Abstract Parties often are associated with specific issues. They can “own” an issue when they develop a reputation of competence and attention in that domain. This paper develops an individual‐level model of the effects of issue ownership, distinguishing between two aspects of this concept: which party is considered to care most about a given issue (associative ownership), and which one is perceived to have the best solutions (competence ownership). When a party is the associative owner of a given issue, voters' preferences on the corresponding issue should have a larger impact on the evaluation of the issue owner. But when a party is considered to be most competent in that domain, the effect of spatial distances should decrease. These hypotheses are tested with a statistical model that allows the impact of voter‐party issue distances on party utilities to vary across both parties and issues. This model is tested with data from the 2011 Swiss election study.

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