Issue Ownership

Issue ownership happens when a plurality of voters believes one political party is better suited to handle a particular issue than another party. In the United States, the Republican Party generally “owns” national defense and crime, while the Democratic Party is thought to better handle, and thus “own,” education and the environment.

Issue ownership is tied to commonly held images of political parties that tend to be relatively stable over time. But if a ruling party handles an issue poorly over a period of time, it may lose the public's confidence on that issue. For some issues, such as the economy, neither party claims enduring ownership. These are called “performance issues” because public opinion is tied mainly to a party's performance rather than its image. A change in a country's political structure also can alter perceptions of issue ownership. In Canada, competition on the right from the newly formed Reform Party helped end the Conservative Party's ownership of the deficit issue in the early 1990s.

Issue ownership affects party strategies. Candidates tend to address most of their campaign communications to issues their party owns. Some evidence [Page 355]suggests candidates benefit when they focus on owned issues. This may be because people are biased toward information that confirms their prior beliefs, so they prefer messages consistent with existing party images. Another explanation is that candidates are more credible when they discuss an issue their party owns. There is some dispute as to whether the benefit of stressing owned issues applies in primary elections or among partisans. Partisans tend to believe their own party is best suited to handle every issue, but the margins are larger for ones their party owns.

To the extent that candidates confine their communication to issues they own, they fail to engage each other on the issues; as the issues they discuss diverge, they talk past one another. However, there is evidence to suggest considerable “issue convergence,” or discussing the same issues, at least in partisan statements reported in the news. While not the norm, some convergence also occurs in political advertising, a format in which campaigns choose the topic rather than reporters. Candidates tend to converge on the same issues more in races that are more competitive, where issue-based voting is more common, so that the opposing candidate cannot determine the way an issue is discussed. For example, George W. Bush in 2000 ran as a “compassionate conservative” on education and Social Security (but stressing individual or local control instead of more centralized approaches).

It has been suggested that the concept be broadened from issue ownership to issue and trait ownership. In the United States, Republicans tend to be perceived as stronger leaders and more moral, while Democrats own the trait of compassion and empathy.