The Accessibility and Electoral Consequences of Issue Competence Perceptions: Evidence from the Swiss 2019 Election

In: Swiss political science review: SPSR = Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft : SZPW = Revue suisse de science politique : RSSP, Band 28, Heft 2, S. 254-276

Abstract

AbstractAccording to the issue ownership theory of voting, voters cast their ballot for the party that they consider to be most competent and most committed to handle an issue of importance to them. This article offers a theoretical expansion of this model, arguing that the effect of issue ownership on vote choice is conditioned by the accessibility of voters' ownership perceptions, as measured by response latencies. Through individual‐level analyses of voting in the 2019 Swiss federal election, we demonstrate that the effect of voters' issue ownership perceptions on their voting decisions is strongest when their ownership attributions are highly accessible and when the issue at stake is considered important. Our results also reveal that the effects of accessibility are largely driven by voting decisions for parties that own the issue in the eyes of a large part of the electorate, such as the Greens in the case of the environment.