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Abstract. Which issue should a political party emphasize to achieve electoral success? This is an important but hard question for political parties because they often face a choice between appealing to their core voters and their potential voters. Their issue ownerships decide according to a large literature. Yet, this study argues that issue ownership provides a poor piece of information as it conflates a party’s competence approval on an issue by its core voters (supporters) and its potential voters (non-supporters). Based on a first dataset consisting of ~4,000,000 voter observations for parties in 14 countries since 1970 on ~4,500 issue ownerships across 20 issues, this study splits issue ownership into ‘issue core’ (approval by supporters) and ‘issue potential’ (approval by non-supporters). The analysis shows that a party’s issue ownership is often either entirely issue core or issue potential, and a party – unintentionally and unknowingly – therefore frequently appeal to core voters when aiming for potential voters (or vice versa). Moreover, the analysis shows that parties face widely different issue competition opportunities due to considerable variation in the core-to-potential ratio in their issue ownership.
Abstract. Which issue should a political party emphasize to achieve electoral success? This is an important but hard question for political parties because they often face a choice between appealing to their core voters and their potential voters. Their issue ownerships decide according to a large literature. Yet, this study argues that issue ownership provides a poor piece of information as it conflates a party’s competence approval on an issue by its core voters (supporters) and its potential voters (non-supporters). Based on a first dataset consisting of ~4,000,000 voter observations for parties in 14 countries since 1970 on ~4,500 issue ownerships across 20 issues, this study splits issue ownership into ‘issue core’ (approval by supporters) and ‘issue potential’ (approval by non-supporters). The analysis shows that a party’s issue ownership is often either entirely issue core or issue potential, and a party – unintentionally and unknowingly – therefore frequently appeal to core voters when aiming for potential voters (or vice versa). Moreover, the analysis shows that parties face widely different issue competition opportunities due to considerable variation in the core-to-potential ratio in their issue ownership.