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