When issues matter: A Survey Experiment with Local Leaders

Abstract Parties and politicians strategically shape their electoral campaigns by meticulously selecting which issues to highlight, sometimes emphasizing specific aspects of these issues to exploit electoral opportunities. This assertion, derived from the issue yield theory, represents a unified vision of valence and positional issues. While this vision considers one aspect of the issue emphasis debate, the issue yield theory has yet to investigate the moderating influence of issue saliency on its predictions. I address this gap by employing innovative data on party leaders. The findings from a survey experiment involving Swiss local politicians ( N = 693) demonstrate that issue saliency indeed moderates the issue yield mechanism, influencing party leaders' choices regarding issue emphasis. This underscores the pivotal role of issue saliency and emphasizes the need to account for it in both the issue yield literature and broader contexts.