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Position, Competence, and Commitment. The three Dimensions of Issue Voting
Stefaan Walgrave
University of Antwerp [email protected]
Jonas Lefevere
Vesalius College [email protected]
Anke Tresch
FORS / University of Lausanne [email protected]
Paper to be presented at the ECPR General Conference in Oslo, 6-9 September 2017
Very first draft—please do not cite or circulate
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INTRODUCTION
Withering cleavages, crumbling party loyalties, and increasing electoral volatility have
challenged the prevailing structural explanations of voting behavior and have prompted
electoral scholars to look for alternative explanations of the vote (Dalton 1984). One of the
candidates that has attracted scholarly attention is issue voting: voters cast their ballot for a
party based on political issues. Political polarization on the elite level in the US has alienated
moderate voters, which in turn are more likely to take their perception of how parties deal
with issues into account (Nie, Verba, and Petrocik 1999; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal
2006). Whether the same rise in issue voting is present in European democracies is much less
obvious. But also in Europe issue voting supposedly is an important determinant of the vote
(Aardal and van Wijnen 2005; but see: Green and Hobolt 2008).
While the literature on issue voting is substantial, remarkably few work has looked
into the multiple ways in which issues are connected to parties (or candidates) in voters’
mind. The dominant approach is the spatial framework of voting behavior, which goes back to
Down’s (1957) model of electoral competition. The idea is simple: voters cast their ballot for
the party (or candidate) that they perceive to hold a position that is closest to their own policy
preferences (e.g., Enelow and Hinich, 1984) or that stays on the same side of an issues as they
do (e.g., Rabinowitz and Macdonald, 1989). A second aspect of issue voting can be labelled
as the competence dimension of issue voting. Here the idea is not so much that people vote
for parties with whom they agree positionally but rather that some parties are considered more
competent to handle and ‘solve’ specific policy issues. Issue voting, in this line of work,
consists of voting for the party that one considers as most competent to tackle salient issues.
Third, and more recently, another way in which parties are linked to voters has gained some
traction in the literature. Apart from being perceived as positionally close and competent,
parties can be perceived as being especially committed to deal with an issue—they are
supposed to consider the issue a priority for political action. Voters bother more about some
issues than about others and they prefer parties that will commit to act on these issues, or
consider it to be competent to deal with those issues.
Hence, following recent work by van der Brug (2017), we argue that at least three
different versions of issue voting exist—a positional, a competence and a commitment variant
of issue voting. However, the literatures addressing these three types of issue voting are rather
disconnected. Coming from different, even opposed, schools of thought, these theories co-
exist without much integration and/or confrontation. The number of studies combining two
perspectives is limited (see, e.g. Green and Hobolt 2008 who integrate position and
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competence), and studies accounting for all three perspectives are close to being inexistent
(but see Lachat 2014). This study’s aim is to compare the three views on issue voting. Do
positional, competence and commitment considerations with regard to specific policy issues
independently affect people’s voting behavior?
We draw on the cases of Belgium and Switzerland, two small European democracies,
and use their national election studies from 2014 (Belgium) and 2015 (Switzerland)
containing novel measures of the three dimensions with regard to several policy issues. As
expected, results show that the three dimensions of the issue-party connection all
independently affect party voting. People tend to vote for the party with whom they agree
positionally on specific policy issues, that they consider to be most competent to deal with
specific issues, and that they think is especially committed to tackling specific issues. For the
commitment dimension, we also find that its effect is moderated by the salience that voters
attribute to issues: voters tend to vote for parties that they consider as committed on an issue
of importance to themselves. For the positional and competence considerations, we do not
find a consistent interaction effect with issue salience.
THREE DIMENSIONS OF ISSUE VOTING
Voters’ issue perceptions can affect their electoral choice in at least three ways. Firstly, with
regards to perceptions of parties’ issue positions, the spatial school of voting behavior forms
the most influential account of how issue considerations affect people’s vote for a party (or a
candidate). Two different types of spatial models have emerged: proximity models suppose
that voters care about how close candidates’ or parties’ positions are to their own (e.g.,
Enelow and Hinich, 1984), while directional models stipulate that voters primarily care about
whether candidates and parties stay on the same side of an issue as they are (e.g., Rabinowith
and Macdonald, 1989). Many debates in this field relate to the political sophistication voters
need to be able to make up their mind based on issue positions (e.g. Carmines and Stimson
1980), to which model provides the best explanation of voters’ behavior and to how they can
be integrated in a unified theory. But the sheer fact that positional considerations with regard
to issues affect the vote has received strong empirical support (see for example: Merrill and
Grofman 1999).
Starting in the 1980s but quickly gaining ground in the last decade, an alternative
account of issue voting holds that people vote for the party that they consider to be most
competent to tackle, or solve, an issue. This work was triggered by Stokes’ (1963) influential
work on valence issues and later developed into a cottage industry around the concept of
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‘issue ownership’ or ‘issue competence’ (Budge and Farlie 1983; Petrocik 1996). The issue
ownership theory, or competence model, of voting assumes that voters cast their ballots on the
basis of valence issues. These are issues on which both voters and parties agree on the same
overall policy goals (e.g., fighting terrorism or unemployment). As a result, on valence issues
parties cannot be differentiated on policy position, but only on their issue-handling
competence. It has found that when people consider a party as best able to handle an issue,
they tend to vote for it. Note that there also is another literature considering the more general
competence of parties or candidates that is unrelated to specific issues but transcends them,
Jennings and Green (2012b) call it ‘macro competence’—we are not going to address that
literature here. The competence issue ownership literature is pretty substantial and many
studies have found voting to be affected by it (e.g. Bellucci 2006; Green and Hobolt 2008;
Bélanger and Meguid 2008; Green and Jennings 2012a).
There is a second variant of the issue ownership argument that yields a third dimension
of issue voting. Initiated by van der Brug (2004) and Bellucci (2006), some scholars have
recently started to talk about ‘associative’ issue ownership—a concept coined by Walgrave
and colleagues (2012). The idea is that people tend to vote for parties that they consider to be
especially committed to tackle the policy issues they themselves care about. This recent works
hold that issue voting is not only a matter of agreeing with parties positionally and of
considering parties as competent (or not) to deal with specific policy issues, but that it is also
a matter of appreciating the priority parties give to specific issues. This recent, and smaller,
variant of issue voting scholarship has produced some evidence that commitment perceptions
do affect the vote (Bellucci 2006; Walgrave, Lefevere, and Tresch 2012; Lachat 2014).
We argued so far that there are (at least) three ways in which issues can be linked to
parties in voters’ minds. And, we referenced empirical work that found these three issue-
related considerations to have an impact on voting behavior. This raises the question as to
what extent position, competence and commitment work together in impacting which party a
voter chooses. The three dimensions may work independently or they may reinforce each
other. Also, it could be that one of these issue considerations has a stronger effect on the vote
than the other dimensions. We do not really know. The reason is that empirical work
examining the three issue voting dimensions at the same time is, as far as we can tell, almost
entirely lacking.
To be sure, there is some work that combines the positional and competence accounts.
Green and Hobolt’s (2008) study of British elections, for example, finds that both positional
and competence considerations play a role, but over time the effect of position has withered
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while the effect of competence has become stronger. The reason is that the distance between
the two main parties and their electorates—Labour and the Conservatives—has drastically
declined since the end of the 1980s. Hence, in a situation of positional convergence, voters
have more difficulties distinguishing parties’ policies and thus more strongly rely on their
perception of party competence than on positional considerations. Problematic in their
account is that the measure of issue competence relies on a proxy measure – parties were
rated as being capable of ‘strong government’ – which does not directly tap parties’ ability to
handle specific issues. Bélanger and Meguid’s (2008) work in Canada is another rare example
of a study combining positional and competence considerations as drivers of the vote. Similar
to Green and Hobolt (2008: 462), who hold that competence should matter more when
valence issues dominate an election, Bélanger and Meguid argue (2008: 483) that competence
cannot be expected to directly affect the vote in case of position issues. Rather, it should
mostly affect the vote if citizens share the party’s issue position. Consequently, for the two
position issues in their study (taxes and social programs) they interact the competence
measure with a voter’s issue position (and issue salience). They find that the effect of
competence on the vote is less conditioned by issue salience for position issues than for
valence issues. Van der Brug’s (2004) study in the Netherlands is the only one we know of
that combines the positional and commitment dimensions of issue voting. There is no main
effect of perceived commitment of a party towards a specific issue, he finds, but the effect is
mediated by position. By emphasizing a certain issue, parties affect voters’ perception that the
party is committed to an issue but this perception has no direct influence on the vote. Rather,
it leads to a change in voters’ perception of parties’ ideological position and this, in turn, has
an effect on the vote. Based on a non-representative Belgian convenience sample, Walgrave et
al. (2012) incorporated competence and commitment measures and found both to matter for
voting in 2009. The only study incorporating all three dimensions of issue voting is, to the
best of our knowledge, Lachat’s (2014) work on the 2011 Swiss elections. Focusing on
positional issues, he finds that positional considerations directly affect voters’ party utilities
for almost all issues, and the same applies for the competence dimension. The effect of
commitment considerations, in contrast, is moderated by positional congruence. Only when
people agree with a party on an issue, does their perception of whether the party is committed
to tackle the issue matter for their vote. Although this study makes a significant contribution
to our understanding of how different issue-related considerations jointly affect the vote, it
draws on a problematic competence measure that asks for the party that has the ‘best
solutions’ for a given issue. This question wording confounds voters’ assessment of party
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competence with positional considerations (see for example: Walgrave, Lefevere, and Tresch
2015). Thus, it is hard to know what Lachat’s results actually imply for the three dimensions
of issue voting.
In sum, there are at least three ways in which voters’ issue considerations may influence
voting behavior. However, given that almost no prior studies simultaneously include the three
dimensions in models of the vote, we do not really know whether position, competence and
commitment affect the vote independently from one another or in interaction with each other,
and which dimension carries most weight in voters’ party choice. In addition, some have
argued that the effect of positional agreement, competence perceptions, and commitment
should be conditioned by issue salience; these issue considerations should mostly matter for
issues that people consider to be important. In the abundant work that examines the positional
dimension of issue voting, some earlier studies interacted issue position (perceptions) with
issue salience (for an early study see: Rabinowitz, Prothro, and Jacoby 1982). Bélanger and
Meguid (2008) theorize and find that competence perceptions in Canada especially matter for
the vote when voters consider a party to be most competent to deal with an issue and when
they consider the issue to be important. Work by Walgrave and colleagues (2012) about the
commitment dimension in Belgium comes to the same conclusion: apart from a main effect of
associative issue ownership on voting, they find the commitment effect to be moderated by
issue salience. In conclusion, apart from the fact that we expect to find a main effect of each
of the three issue considerations on the vote, we also expect that each of these dimensions
affect vote choice in interaction with issue salience. Furthermore, we also expect that
positional considerations moderate the effect of competence and, especially, commitment on
the vote.
DATA AND METHODS
We examine the effect of the three dimensions of issue voting drawing on data from two
countries, Belgium and Switzerland. These countries were not chosen because of their
particularly different political systems, but rather because good data for these two countries
are available. Both are small parliamentary democracies with proportional electoral systems,
and both have very fragmented party systems (in both countries, thirteen parties are
represented in the national parliament). Both are federal countries with a lot of competences
decentralized and under regional or cantonal rule. The main difference is that the Swiss
system does not have a classic parliamentary system. In Switzerland, according to the
“concordance” principle, executive power is shared by the main political parties, which
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receive a number of seats that is roughly proportional to their parliamentary strength. As a
result, the same four main parties have formed the government for decades without a common
coalition program (e.g. Kriesi and Trechsel 2008). In addition, parliament cannot unseat the
government, and the government cannot dissolve parliament. Furthermore, the Swiss system
is characterized by strong direct democratic institutions, which are almost entirely absent in
Belgium. Yet, despite these differences we do consider these to be two quite similar settings
with regards to issue voting. We do not put forward expectations on cross-country differences,
but rather anticipate similar results in the two countries. Such similarities, if we indeed find
them, would enhance our confidence in our findings’ generalizability to other nations. One
final remark about the country cases: since Belgium does not have a unified party system but
a separate Flemish and Walloon party space—Francophone parties only compete in Wallonia
while Flemish parties only compete in Flanders—we consider Belgium to consist of two
regional cases (we neglect the complex bilingual Brussels case here). So, in all, we examine
the effect of issue considerations on vote choice in three political systems.
Evidence comes from the last national elections studies in Belgium and Switzerland.
In Belgium, we resort to the post-electoral wave of the 2014 national election study, which
was implemented in the form of a telephone survey. The initial population sample (N=4,511)
was randomly drawn from the state’s national register. The first wave was implemented
before the elections and was done in a face-to-face fashion. Response rate of this first wave
was 45% (N=2,019). Of that sample, 76% (N=1,532) participated in the second post-electoral
wave after the elections on May 25th. Due to item non-response, the sample size for the actual
analysis is lower: N=1,469 (N=798 in Flanders and N=671 in Wallonia). We use un-weighted
data. In Switzerland, we rely on data from a combined panel/rolling cross-section online
survey conducted as part of 2015 Swiss Election Studies (SELECTS). Over the course of the
campaign, the same respondents were interviewed four times. The initial sample was drawn
from the national official registry and included 29,500 Swiss citizens. Among them, 11,009
individuals participated in the first, pre-campaign wave of interviews that started in mid-June
and ended in late July. The second wave took place during the campaign and took the form of
a rolling cross-section: in the 60 days before Election Day (October 19), about 120 interviews
per day were completed with respondents from wave 1 (N=7,295). The third and fourth waves
were organized after the elections. In the third wave, all respondents from wave 1 where again
contacted and asked about their electoral choice and political opinions (N=7,601). The final
wave was conducted among respondents of wave 3 (N=5,411) and started the day after the
Federal Council (Swiss government) elections on December 9 (see, Lutz, 2016: 2-3). For this
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paper, we rely on the third wave to measure party vote and on the first wave to measure the
three issue considerations. Due to item non-response, the sample used in the actual analysis is
N=5,251.
The dependent variable of the analyses below is the Party Vote registered after the
elections. It consists of dummy variables per party that are coded as 1 if a voter voted for the
party and 0 if s/he did not. The coding of the party vote variable implies that we have several
nested observations per respondent (one observation for each party-issue combination). When
respondents can only choose one among several alternatives, conditional logit is often seen as
an appropriate model. However, this model has also some important drawbacks for our
purposes. In fact, issue salience, an important moderating variable, is constant over
alternatives. This is also the case for other confounding factors that we would like to control
for (age, gender, education, political knowledge). For these reasons, we decided to estimate
(for this first version of the paper) cross-classified multi-level logistic regression models, with
random intercepts at the respondent and party-issue level.1
In Belgium, the three issue considerations were tapped with regard to eight issues:
employment, environment, crime, immigration, economy, state reform, defense and taxes.
These issues represent a mix of position and valence issues. In Switzerland, five issues were
enquired: Europe, social affairs, environment, economy, and immigration. The three issue
considerations were measured using the question wording as presented in Table 1. Note that
the question wordings in the two countries are not identical in the two countries. In Belgium,
we have no measure that directly taps into party commitment. The available question is a
measure of “associative issue ownership”, which is believed to result from a long history of
party attention and commitment towards an issue (Walgrave et al., 2012). In Switzerland, the
question wording more directly deals with commitment. Regarding party competence, the
Belgian survey asks about parties’ ability to deliver on their program, whereas the Swiss
question wording more generally asks about parties’ competence on issues. Importantly, the
Belgian question wording adds a non-partisan cue, urging voters to evaluate parties’
competence regardless of their agreement with the parties’ positions. However, previous
experimental work has shown that these question wordings tap similar attitudinal constructs
(see: Walgrave et al. 2016). We are thus confident that the country comparisons are valid.
1 We also ran cross-classified linear regressions with an alternative specification of the dependent variable : a propensity-to-vote measure (scale from 0 to 10) in Switzerland and measure of overall party sympathy in Belgium. The results look highly similar. This approach has the disadvantage, however, that we have no possibility to control for party evaluation in the models, given that the Belgian survey does not include a measure of party identification.
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The position agreement measures differ more substantially: in Belgium positional
agreement is assessed subjectively by the voters themselves, in Switzerland it is calculated
based on objective distances with the average party voter—that is on our calculation and not
on an assessment by the voters themselves.
Table 1 – Measures of the three issue considerations
Concept Question wording Belgium
Question wording Switzerland
Coding
Issue Position
When you think of these issues, can you indicate with which parties’ positions you generally agree? You can mark multiple parties
Distance (reversed) between voters’ and party’s position on an issue, on a five point scale, so that higher scores imply smaller distances, and greater agreement. Party position is inferred through the mean position of the party electorate.
Belgium: takes a value of 1 if the respondent marked the party as agreeing with it, and 0 if the respondent did not. Switzerland: takes a value from 1 to 5 indicating greater positional agreement.
Issue Competence
Which party do you consider best able to implement its program concerning ISSUE, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the party?
Which party is the most competent to handle ISSUE?
Takes a value of 1 if the party is mentioned, 0 if not.
Issue Commitment
Which party do you spontaneously think about when you think about ISSUE?
According to you, which party cares most about ISSUE?
Takes a value of 1 if the party is mentioned, 0 if not.
Issue Salience was measured drawing on the following questions: If the elections were to be
held today, based on which issues would you make your choice between the parties?
(Belgium; 1=very unimportant for my vote choice; 5=very important); According to you, how
important are the following issues? (Switzerland; 1=very unimportant; 4=very important). In
addition to the variables of interest, we control for respondent’s Political Knowledge. In both
countries, the measure is based on five factual knowledge questions where higher scores equal
more correct answers. Issue voting is likely to vary between voters with a high or a low level
of political knowledge. In addition, knowledge may also be expected to increase the
likelihood to identify parties’ issue competence and commitment. Finally, as is customary we
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include Sex, Age, and Education (1 = Lower or no education, 2 = High school (reference), 3 =
Higher education) as controls.
Unfortunately, the Belgian data does not include a measure of party identification,
which is often used as a control variable in prior work (see, e.g. Bélanger & Meguid, 2008;
Green and Hobolt, 2008; Lachat, 2014). The only alternative available in both countries was a
measure of overall party evaluation in Belgium, and electoral utilities in Switzerland. In
Belgium, voters were asked “How sympathetic do you consider each of these parties?”.
Respondents could score parties from 0 (Very unsympathetic) to 10 (Very sympathetic). In
Switzerland, voters were asked “Can you indicate the probability that you would ever vote for
the following parties?”. Respondents could answer on a scale ranging from 0 (“Very low
probability”) to 10 (Very high probability). We decided not to include this in our main models
due to the fact that overall party evaluation is so closely related to actual vote choice (Van der
Eijk, Van Der Brug, and Franklin 2006). However, in the Appendix we present all models
with the party evaluation/utility measure included as a control. In the results section, we refer
to these models in our discussion of the multivariate findings.
A final note with regard to the possible endogeneity of the three issue considerations is
in order. We consider Party Vote as the dependent variable, and the three issue considerations
as the independent variables. Yet, this direction of causality is not per se given. In fact,
scholars have increasingly voiced worries about the endogeneity of, especially, issue
competence evaluations. There is now a consensus that party preference also drives issue
competence perceptions (see: Wagner and Zeglovits 2014; Walgrave, Lefevere, and Tresch
2014; Therriault 2015; Walgrave et al. 2016; Walgrave and Lefevere 2017). This work also
shows that the commitment dimension is much less affected by preceding party preference.
Earlier work has formulated similar reservations with regard to the self-declared perception of
positional agreement between voters and their parties (see for example: Macdonald and
Rabinowitz 1997). Since there is no way for us to check for endogeneity we do not address
this possibility here and move on as if the causal arrow only ran from issue considerations to
the vote and not (also) the other way around. Due to the panel design of the Swiss study, our
measures of competence, commitment and issue salience precede the measurement of party
vote. The problem of post-rationalization should thus be more limited.
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RESULTS
The independence of the three issue voting dimensions
Are the three dimensions of position, competence and commitment independent from each
other? In other words, do voters distinguish between the closest, most competent and most
committed party on an issue or do they always name the same party on all three dimensions?
Earlier work on voters’ competence and commitment perceptions suggests that these
dimensions are not fully orthogonal but to some extent dependent (Walgrave, Lefevere, and
Tresch 2012).
Some correlation between these three issue considerations is to be expected. A voter
that marks party A as being the party with whom s/he agrees on issue X, has a greater than
random chance to consider party A also as the party that is most competent to deal with issue
X and to be most committed to put its best efforts in tackling issue X. But can we still
consider the three dimensions as being separate things? Table 2 below presents average
(across all issues) rank order correlations between the three issue considerations per country
(region).
Table 2 – Spearman’s Rank Order Correlations (Rho) between the three issue considerations per country (region)
Flanders (N=49,976)
Wallonia (N=35,198)
Switzerland (N=175,840)
Issue Position & Issue Competence .51 .49 0.08 Issue Competence & Issue Commitment .40 .45 0.54 Issue Position & Issue Commitment .37 .42 0.04 Note: In Switzerland, position was measured on a continuous scale. Therefore, we ranked the parties according
to their distance from the respondent’s position (e.g. the closest party received a rank of 7, the farthest party a
rank of 1). This way, we could use a similar correlation measure for all countries and considerations.
In Belgium, all correlations hoover around .45. While related, the three issue considerations
tapped here are definitely not one and the same thing. For Switzerland, competence and
commitment are slightly more correlated compared to Belgium, but are also far from
completely overlapping. With regard to position, the Swiss data yield much lower
correlations, which may be due to the objective measure used (instead of respondent self-
reporting in Belgium). However, also here we observe that competence is more strongly
correlated to position than commitment.
Yet, overall it does not seem to be the case that the concepts are identical: voters
manage to differentiate the three different ways in which parties are connected to issues. One
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possible cause of the considerable size of the correlations is the fact that the issue
considerations are partially endogenous with the vote. Voters tend to consider the party they
vote for the one with which they agree most, the party that is most competent on all issues,
and the party that is most committed to most issues. Figure 1 shows the percent of
respondents that vote for a party, broken down by the amount of issues for which that party is
considered as most competent and committed by the respondents, and on which they agree
with the party. The graph shows that the percent of voters that would vote for a party that is
not considered as most competent, committed and in agreement on any issue is very low: 7%
in Flanders and 8% in Wallonia. As soon as parties are considered best on a single issue, more
voters will vote for it: 23% in Flanders and 21% in Wallonia. As parties are considered best
on more and more issues, the percent of voters that also end up voting for them steadily
increases as well. The relationship is not perfectly linear, but note that this simple analysis
does not account for issue salience – it might be the case that a party owns many issues, none
of which the voter considers particularly important.
Figure 1: Party vote by number of issues for which party is considered as most committed, competent and in agreement with the voter
Another way of examining the independence of the three issue considerations is looking at the
share of voters that consider the same party as competent and committed, or competent and in
agreement with them. This gives us insight into the overlap of the various issue considerations
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
PercentofVotersVotingforaParty,byamountofissuesonwhichthepartyisconsideredmostcommitted,competent,andinagreementwith
voter.
Flanders Wallonia
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at play. Table 3 shows the percent of respondents that chose the same party for different
combinations of the three issue considerations.
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Table 3: Overlap between three issue considerations amongst respondents, per issue and country (region). % of sample that has the same party as…
Flanders Crime Defense
Economy
Employment Environment Immigration State
Reform Taxes
Competence + Commitment 44% 64% 56% 54% 73% 39% 52% 39% Competence + Position1 65% 72% 66% 67% 75% 61% 65% 64% Commitment + Position1 49% 62% 60% 65% 74% 44% 53% 42% Competence + Commitment+ Position1
34% 51% 43% 44% 62% 28% 38% 27%
N 671 538 656 687 721 719 639 619
Wallonia Crime Defense
Economy
Employment Environment Immigration State
Reform Taxes
Competence + Commitment 54% 63% 65% 68% 77% 54% 65% 56% Competence + Position1 65% 70% 69% 77% 79% 65% 76% 71% Commitment + Position1 60% 65% 65% 74% 78% 53% 69% 57% Competence + Commitment+ Position1
40% 50% 50% 59% 67% 40% 54% 43%
N 424 396 550 571 647 436 403 515
Switzerland EU Immigration
Social Policy
Environment
Economy
Competence + Commitment 66% 59% 70% 70% 77% Competence + Position2 22% 16% 25% 16% 16% Commitment + Position2 20% 16% 22% 17% 16% Competence + Commitment+ Position2
16% 14% 19% 14% 14%
N 5589 6397 6823 7037 6401 Note: percentages based on sample of respondents that indicated a party for all three variables. Respondents that answered “none of the parties”, “all parties equal” or “don’t know” are thus excluded, as are respondents that indicated “don’t know” on the question regarding their agreement with the various parties on the issue. 1Respondents could indicate that they agree with multiple parties on the issue: as such, these figures only show the amount of respondents that agree with the party they indicated as the issue owner, but it might be that they also indicated that they agree with other parties on the issue. 2 We calculate a ‘closest party’ variable, which is 1 if the party is the closest party to the respondent’s position, and 0 if not.
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A number of general trends seem to emerge from the table. First, in spite of some variation
between issues, within each country the overlap between position, competence and
commitment seems relatively stable across issues. Secondly, within each country/region the
degree of overlap systematically differs depending on the specific issue considerations.
Examining the pairwise overlaps, competence and position are always the most overlapping in
both Flanders and Wallonia. In Switzerland, commitment and competence are the most
overlapping, though the different measurement of position is probably the cause of the (much)
lower pairwise overlap with this consideration.
The effect of position, competence, and commitment on vote choice
Table 4 presents the results of six multilevel binomial logistic regressions, two per country
(region). The first model per country estimates direct effects, the second models add
interaction terms of the three issue considerations with issue salience.
The results point to strong similarities among the three countries (regions),
notwithstanding the sometimes different operationalization of the key variables (see above,
especially the positional and commitment dimension). To start, the main effects of position,
competence and commitment are very similar. In all three models, these effects are
statistically significant. This testifies of the fact that the three issue voting dimensions matter,
and independently from one another. Also the strength of the effects is similar across the three
political systems under scrutiny. We calculated marginal effects based on the models 1, 3 and
5, which represent the impact of a one-unit change of the independent variable on the
dependent (keeping the other variables at their mean values). As the three variables of interest
are dichotomous, the marginal effects capture the full range of the variable’s impact on the
vote. The mean probability to vote for a party in Flanders increases with respectively 9%, 4%
and 1% when that party is considered to be in agreement with the voter (position), considered
most competent, or most committed on the issue. Knowing that the average electoral score of
any party in Flanders is 14% (=100% divided by seven parties), these effects are considerable.
Together and cumulated, the three issue considerations exactly double the chance that a voter
would vote for that party (9+4+1=14). In Wallonia, the marginal effects are 6% (position), 3%
(competence) and 2% (commitment); with an average voting probability of 14% per party as
well, the total effect of the three issue considerations is only slightly smaller. In Switzerland,
the marginal effects are 5% for position 16% for competence and 3% for commitment.
However, note that position is measured on a five-point scale in Switzerland. Distance
effectively ranges roughly 3.8 points on these scales, so the impact of position over the
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entirety of the scale is 19%. These results suggest that the main and direct effect of position is
biggest, followed by competence and commitment.
17
Table 4 - Cross classified logistic regressions predicting vote choice. Observations clustered at the respondent and party-issue level.
Note: *** = p < .001, ** = p < .01, * = p < .05.
Model 1 Flanders
Main Effects
Model 2 Flanders
Interactions
Model 3 Wallonia
Main Effects
Model 4 Wallonia
Interactions
Model 5 Switzerland Main Effects
Model 6 Switzerland Interactions
Variable Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Issue Position 1.45*** (0.04) 1.35*** (0.15) 1.24*** (0.05) 1.06*** (0.19) 0.57*** (0.01) 0.33*** (0.04) Issue Competence 0.71*** (0.05) 0.21 (0.18) 0.66*** (0.06) 0.85*** (0.24) 1.91*** (0.02) 1.11*** (0.09) Issue Commitment 0.19*** (0.05) -0.72*** (0.19) 0.44*** (0.05) -0.39 (0.22) 0.34*** (0.03) 1.43*** (0.10) Issue Salience -0.03+ (0.02) -0.10*** (0.02) -0.01 (0.02) -0.05* (0.03) -0.01 (0.01) -0.09*** (0.02) Position * Salience 0.02 (0.04) 0.04 (0.05) 0.07*** (0.01) Competence * Salience 0.12** (0.04) -0.05 (0.06) 0.25*** (0.03) Commitment * Salience 0.23*** (0.04) 0.20*** (0.05) 0.57*** (0.03) Sex -0.00 (0.03) -0.01 (0.03) 0.07 (0.05) 0.06 (0.05) 0.06*** (0.02) 0.06*** (0.02) Education (ref: high school)
- No diploma / Elementary -0.13* (0.06) -0.13* (0.06) 0.13 (0.10) 0.12 (0.10) -0.05 (0.09) -0.06 (0.09) - Higher education -0.05 (0.03) -0.05 (0.03) 0.07 (0.06) 0.07 (0.06) 0.02 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02)
Age -0.00 (0.00) -0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) -0.00 (0.00) -0.00 (0.00) Political Knowledge -0.04** (0.01) -0.04** (0.01) -0.03 (0.02) -0.03 (0.02) -0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) Constant -2.64*** (0.17) -2.38*** (0.18) -3.25*** (0.28) -3.09*** (0.29) -1.98*** (0.14) -1.78*** (0.15) Log likelihood -14714.44 -14683.03 -11219.72 -11210.1 -59884.02 -59444.05 AIC 29452.89 29396.07 22463.43 22450.2 119792.0 118918.1 BIC 29558.96 29528.66 22565.81 22578.17 119913.4 119069.8 Nobservations 50,992 50,992 37,478 37,478 182.679 182.679 Nrespondents 798 798 671 671 5,251 5,251 Nparty-issue 48 to 64 48 to 64 7 to 56 7 to 56 7 to 35 7 to 35
18
Looking at the interaction models 2, 4 and 6, shows that in all three countries (regions), there
is a positive and significant interaction effect of issue commitment and issue salience on vote
choice. This results confirms earlier conclusions by Walgrave and colleagues (2012). The two
other interaction effects—salience with competence and with position—produce less
consistent results. In Switzerland, these interactions are significant, but in terms of size are
comparable to the Flemish and Walloon results —the Swiss sample being much larger than
the Flemish and Walloon samples. In Flanders, competence interacts significantly with
salience but position does not. In Wallonia none of these other two interaction effects reaches
statistical significance (one of them goes in the same direction).
Figure 2 plots these interaction effects. The figures illustrate the remarkably similar
effect of the interaction of issue commitment and issue salience on the vote in all three
regions. The steepness of the slopes is similar. In each of the three cases, increasing levels of
salience reinforce the effect of issue commitment perceptions on the vote. For the other two
issue considerations we observe more variation across regions. Issue competence interacts
positively with issue salience in Flanders and Switzerland, but in both cases competence
always exerts a significantly positive effect on the vote, regardless of the salience of the issue.
This effect is entirely absent in Wallonia, though. Finally, the figures confirm that positional
considerations are not moderated by issue salience.
In the appendix (Table A1) we run the same models by controlling for party
evaluation. Although party evaluation is closely related to the dependent variable, the direct
effects of position, competence and commitment remain (mostly) significant – though they
become less sizeable. However, the interaction between commitment and salience is no longer
significant in the Belgian regions. In Switzerland, the direct and interaction effects both hold
up, only the interaction between position and salience no longer reaches statistical
significance.
19
Figure 2 - Marginal effects of Interactions based on models 2, 4, 6
20
In a last step, we present models including an interaction between position and competence,
and position and commitment. Previous research has argued that the effect of commitment
(aka associative issue ownership), and to a lesser extent of competence, should be moderated
by positional agreement between voters and parties (e.g., Bélanger and Meguid, 2008; Lachat,
2014; van der Brug, 2017). The reason is that a voter can acknowledge a party’s commitment
to handle an issue without necessarily agreeing with the party’s policies on the issue. In this
case, commitment is arguably less likely to affect the vote. The results in Table 5 clearly
provide support for this line of reasoning in Switzerland, where positional considerations
moderate the effect of commitment and competence.
Table 5 - Cross classified logistic regressions predicting vote choice. Observations clustered at the respondent and party-issue level.
Note: *** = p < .001, ** = p < .01, * = p < .05.
In the Belgian regions, the interactions are mostly insignificant. However, if we illustrate the
effects in a marginal effects plot (Figure 3), we can see a similar pattern in all three regions:
the more voters disagree with a party, the more the impact of commitment on the vote
decreases (or almost disappears).
Flanders
Wallonia Switzerland
Variable Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Issue Position 1.47*** (0.05) 1.34*** (0.06) -0.59*** (0.01) Issue Competence 0.78*** (0.07) 0.88*** (0.09) 1.58*** (0.04) Issue Commitment 0.16* (0.07) 0.44*** (0.07) 0.62*** (0.04) Issue Salience -0.03+ (0.02) -0.01 (0.02) -0.01 (0.01) Competence * Position -0.12 (0.09) -0.37*** (0.11) -0.38*** (0.04) Commitment * Position 0.07 (0.09) -0.00 (0.10) 0.33*** (0.04) Sex -0.00 (0.03) 0.07 (0.05) 0.06*** (0.02) Education (ref: high school)
- No diploma / Elementary
-0.13* (0.06) 0.13 (0.10) 0.03 (0.04)
- Higher education -0.05 (0.03) 0.07 (0.06) 0.02 (0.02) Age -0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) -0.00 (0.00) Political Knowledge -0.04** (0.01) -0.04 (0.02) 0.00 (0.01) Constant -2.64*** (0.17) -3.26*** (0.28) -1.97*** (0.14) Log likelihood -14713.49 -11213.74 -59818.7 AIC 29454.98 22455.48 119665.4 BIC 29578.73 22574.92 119807 Nobservations 50,992 37,478 182,679 Nrespondents 798 671 5,251 Nparty-issue 48 to 64 7 to 56 7 to 35
21
Figure 3 – Marginal effects of interactions based on models in Table 5
22
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The study started with the observation that there are three different streams of literature with
regard to issue voting, although not all of them refer to themselves as being about ‘issue
voting’, and that these three literatures are almost entirely disconnected from one another.
Scholars who look into issue voting from a positional or spatial perspective only look at the
overlap between party positions and voter preferences with regard to specific issues; students
of issue ownership are mostly interested in how voters’ perception of parties’ issue
competence affect their voting behavior; and a newer stream of work that fares under the
associative issue ownership label examines whether voters’ beliefs that some parties are
especially committed to deal with some specific issues affects how they vote. Until recently,
these three strands of work have mostly been disconnected from each other. Our goal with
this study was to see whether the three types of issue voting can be reconciled and to
investigate to what extent they are complementary and each contribute to explaining voting
behavior.
Drawing on novel evidence from three political systems and spanning a large number
of issues, we can conclude that each of the three issue considerations separately, and
controlling for each other, contribute to explaining which party people vote for. The results
suggest that the three dimensions of issue voting are to some extent independent drivers of
voting behavior. Somehow, when people evaluate parties on issues they consider parties’
position, parties’ competence and parties’ commitment with regard to issues. Moreover, the
evidence points out that these issue considerations matter more for some issues than for
others. The salience of issues consistently increases the effect of issue commitment
considerations, and the same is the case, albeit less robustly, with regard to competence
considerations. Positional agreement does not weigh heavier on the vote with regard to salient
than with regard to non-salient issues though, which is an unexpected result warranting
further inquiry.
The take-home message from the study is simple. Though position and competence
constitute the major issue-related drivers of voting behavior, the impact of perceptions of
parties’ commitment also matter—directly and in interaction with issue salience and
positional considerations. In short, there is more to issue voting than position or competence
alone. Commitment considerations motivate the vote as well, and not taking them into
account impoverishes our understanding of how people arrive at a voting decision. Knowing
from previous work that commitment perceptions are less endogenous than competence
perceptions—they are less affected by pre-existing party preferences—our main advice would
23
be to incorporate people’s perceptions of which parties are particularly motivated to act upon
specific issues in our models of issue voting in particular and of voting more generally.
24
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APPENDIX: MODEL ESTIMATES, CONTROLLING FOR PARTY EVALUATION
Table A1 - Cross classified logistic regressions predicting vote choice. Observations clustered at the respondent and party-issue level.
Note: *** = p < .001, ** = p < .01, * = p < .05
Model 1 Flanders
Main Effects
Model 2 Flanders
Interactions
Model 3 Wallonia
Main Effects
Model 4 Wallonia
Interactions
Model 5 Switzerland Main Effects
Model 6 Switzerland Interactions
Variable Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Coeff S.E. Issue Position 0.80*** (0.05) 0.47** (0.18) 0.64*** (0.06) 0.59* (0.23) 0.22*** (0.02) 0.22*** (0.06) Issue Competence 0.08 (0.06) -0.09 (0.22) 0.40*** (0.07) 0.84** (0.29) 0.78*** (0.03) 0.35** (0.12) Issue Commitment 0.35*** (0.06) 0.15 (0.21) 0.36*** (0.06) -0.05 (0.27) 0.16*** (0.04) -0.63*** (0.13) Issue Salience -0.04+ (0.02) -0.08** (0.03) -0.01 (0.03) -0.02 (0.03) -0.05*** (0.01) -0.12*** (0.03) Position * Salience 0.08+ (0.04) 0.01 (0.06) 0.00 (0.02) Competence * Salience 0.05 (0.05) -0.11 (0.07) 0.13*** (0.04) Commitment * Salience 0.04 (0.05) 0.10 (0.06) 0.25*** (0.04) Sex -0.10 (0.10) -0.10 (0.10) -0.04 (0.14) -0.04 (0.14) -0.03 (0.04) -0.03 (0.04) Education (ref: high school)
- No diploma / Elementary -0.06 (0.21) -0.06 (0.21) -0.19 (0.28) -0.19 (0.28) 0.72** (0.24) - Higher education -0.08 (0.10) -0.08 (0.10) 0.04 (0.15) 0.04 (0.15) -0.16*** (0.04) -0.18*** (0.03)
Age 0.01* (0.00) 0.01* (0.00) 0.01 (0.00) 0.01 (0.00) 0.01*** (0.00) 0.01*** (0.00) Political Knowledge -0.07+ (0.04) -0.07+ (0.04) 0.03 (0.06) 0.03 (0.06) -0.09*** (0.01) -0.09*** (0.01) Party Evaluation 0.95*** (0.02) 0.95*** (0.02) 1.09*** (0.02) 1.09*** (0.02) 0.76*** (0.01) 0.76*** (0.01) Constant -8.09*** (0.30) -7.94*** (0.30) -9.78*** (0.44) -9.76*** (0.45) -6.97*** (0.18) -6.39*** (0.20) Log likelihood -11321.52 -11316.43 -8431.889 -8430.028 -39887.43 -39836.51 AIC 22669.04 22664.86 16889.78 16892.06 79800.85 79703.03 BIC 22783.7 22805.97 16999.87 17027.56 79931.86 79854.19 Nobservations 50,992 50,992 35,198 35,198 182.679 182.679 Nrespondents 798 798 667 667 5,251 5,251 Nparty-issue 48 to 64 48 to 64 8 to 56 8 to 56 7 to 35 7 to 35