Wanted: The Education President: Issue Trespassing by Political Candidates

What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

“…For the emphasis experiments, first, it might be the case that our manipulation is simply too vague. Thus, as pointed out by Norpoth and Buchanan (1992) voters might require more than one exposure to a party's emphasis of a given issue to accept it as relevant for their evaluation of the party's issue ownership. In fact, precisely for the emphasis strategy, the bar for influencing voters' perceptions might be higher since the strategy does not entail any information about what the party might want to do on the issue -it merely involves attention.…”

“…From our design, thus, it is impossible to determine how long the effects last, but as just discussed for the case of the emphasis strategy (cf. Norpoth and Buchanan, 1992) it might be necessary for parties to repeat the relevant information several times in order to obtain a lasting effect. However, in the context of a tight election campaign, even short-lived effects may have positive effects for a party if it succeeds in improving ownership over an issue that is salient in the campaign.…”

“…289-90; emphasis added) talk about 'issues that are always, on balance, favourable to the left' or 'the bourgeois parties'. Petrocik (1996, p. 826) similarly states that 'Perceptions of a party's issue competence probably change very slowly, when they change at all' (see also Norpoth and Buchanan, 1992). The position is more nuanced, though, in his later contribution (Petrocik et al, 2003, p. 602) where it is stated that 'Issue-handling reputations are not eternal or even invariant'.…”

“…Even more problematic may be to get voters to perceive party communication as more than cheap talk. Thus, Norpoth and Buchanan (1992) suggest that it takes more than an election campaign to convince voters of a change in issue emphasis. One would expect the chances hereof to improve over time, however (cf.…”

Can Voters Be Equal? A Cross-national Analysis

“…Althaus 1996;Bartels 1998;Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996: 6;Downs 1957: 91, 94, 235, 252-56, 263-66, 273;Hill and Leighley 1992;Lijphart 1997;Moore 1987;Norpoth and Buchanan 1992;Pacek and Radcliff 1994;Rosenstone and Hansen 1993;Verba and Nie 1972: 309-18). This paper only considers two of them: those that may derive from the socially unequal distribution of two aspects of political involvement: electoral participation and political knowledge.…”