First draft – comments are welcome

Parties often are associated with specific issues. They can “own ” an issue when they develop a reputation of competence and attention in that domain. While there is much aggregate-level evidence on the relation between issue salience and party results, the individual-level mechanisms are less well understood. This paper develops an individual-level model of issue ownership effects. It suggests distinguishing between two aspects of issue ownership: which party is considered to care most about a given issue, and which party is considered to have the best solutions in that domain. The model suggests that both aspects of issue ownership have different effects. When a party is associated with 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 applied to data from the 2011 Swiss election study