Issue Salience, Ownership, and Cross-Pressures in the American Electorate: 2016 ANES Pilot Study Technical Report

Abstract

The purpose of our proposed battery of questions was two-fold. First, we wanted to introduce an alternative measure of issue salience: one based on rankings rather than ratings. The goal here is to identify the relative importance of issues to voters, something that can be lost with Likert-type ratings (in which respondents can rate all or most issues are "extremely important.") Second, because perceived party competence has a conditioning effect on the relationship between salience and vote choice, we wanted to include an ownership question asking respondents which party they believe would be better at handling salient issues.

The findings from the ANES 2016 Pilot Study are promising. First, the salience rankings reveal the diversity of issue salience attitudes, and how salience attitudes are split along partisan lines, in the American electorate. In addition, economic growth and inequality represent different, and important, conceptions of the broad stimulus "the economy" across parties. Second, the competence measures show that Democrats and Republicans are willing to rate either the other party or no party as competent handlers of at least one personally salient issue. Finally, both the salience and ownership measures are significant predictors of vote choice in both primary and general election matchups. We recommend including both items on the regular 2016 ANES Time Series study.

Keywords: voting behavior, issue salience, non-differentiation