Explaining the (In)Stability of Voters’ Issue Ownership Perceptions: Evidence from the 2019 Swiss Election

Recent research demonstrates that voters who change their perceptions of parties’ reputation on specific issues (issue ownership) are also more likely to change their party choice accordingly. This article deals with the sources of such instability, with an emphasis on the accessibility of voters’ perceptions as measured by survey response times. We contend that more accessible perceptions are more stable, but that this stabilizing effect decreases over time. Panel data from the 2019 Swiss Election Study strongly suggest that voters who are quick to assess parties’ competence and associative ownership are more likely to stick to their judgment, both in the short-term context of an election campaign (which in turn heightens the likelihood that they end up voting for the party they identified as the issue owner) and in the longer run. Hence, political parties may have incentives to continuously reinforce voters’ issue ownership perceptions throughout the electoral cycle.