Own party issue ownership emphasis in presidentialtelevision spots.

This study employs Petrocik's Issue Ownership theory to examine issue ownership emphasis and election outcome. Television spots from 1952 to 2004, every presidential campaign thus far to employ TV advertisements, were computer content analyzed. Democratic and Republican winners emphasized the issues

owned by their own party more than losers (and eight of nine Democrats who emphasized Republican issues more than Democratic issues lost elections). In 11 of 14 elections, the candidate who stressed his own party's issues more than his opponent won the election. Candidates from both political party are more likely to win when they stress their own party's issues more than the other party's issues. These findings are consistent with Issue Ownership theory: Candidates who emphasize the issues owned by their political party should enjoy an advantage at the polls.

Keywords: Election Outcome; Issue Ownership; Presidential TV Spots; Political Parties

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This study focuses on presidential television spots, an important message form. West (2001) noted that "television ads are a major component of political races. In recent presidential campaigns, campaign spots have comprised around 60% of total fall expenditures" (p. 2). The importance of television advertising continues to increase. Anderson (2004) reported that "Hundreds of ads--from an astounding 50 separate sponsors on the Democratic side and another 19 on the Republican side--have aired 675,000 times on cable and in top markets" (p. 19). The spending was astronomical, $580 million from all these sources, almost three times as much as the $200 million spent in 2000 (Anderson).

Furthermore, a meta-analysis found that exposure to political spots increased issue knowledge, influenced perceptions of the candidates' character, altered attitudes, and increased campaign interest (Benoit, Leshner, & Chattopadhyay, 2005). Clearly, the effects of television spots warrant scholarly attention. This study employs Petrocik's (1996) Issue Ownership theory to investigate the content of presidential ads and election outcome.

Issue Ownership Theory

Petrocik (1996) noted that the two major parties "own" a different set of issues. Over time, voters have developed an association between each party and a group of issues, believing that one party is better at dealing with, or handling, a given issue. The Democratic Party, for example, owns such issues as education, health care, jobs, and Social Security; the Republican Party, on the other hand, owns issues such as national defense, foreign policy, taxes, and crime. This does not mean that every voter believes that party can better handle that issue, but that the party has an advantage with most voters.

The data in Table 1 make it clear that if voters are concerned with terrorism, Republican candidates (such as President George W. Bush) enjoy a 51% to 30% advantage with voters. On the other hand, Democrats begin with a 50% to 33% advantage among voters thinking primarily about Social Security. Political candidates face two basic choices: change the voters' attitudes (e.g., which party would do a better job handling terrorism, crime, Social Security, or health care) or change priorities (e.g., which issues matter the most to voters: terrorism or Social Security). Petrocik's (1996) issue ownership suggests that candidates use their campaign messages to increase the salience of the issues their political party owns. For example, consider the data in Table 1: A Democrat could either attempt to persuade voters that he or she could do a better job fighting terrorism and crime than President Bush, or that Democrat could try to make Social Security and Health Care more important to voters than terrorism and crime.

According to Petrocik (1996), an issue-handling reputation reflects the relationship between a party's political agenda (and record) and its supporters. Groups (e.g., business, labor, minorities) have a proclivity to associate with one party because it tends to promote their interests and, in turn, the party promotes those interests to maintain the support of these groups. So, party ownership tends to be a "long term" phenomenon (p. 827) and "issue handling reputations emerge from ... history" (p. 828). Issue ownership reflects a party's constituency as well as the behavior of elected party members and this reflects relatively stable perceptions among voters.

The key prediction of issue ownership theory is that political campaign messages are prone to "emphasize issues on which they are advantaged and their opponents are less well regarded" (Petrocik, 1996, p. 825). If candidates can increase the salience of their own political party's issues to voters by emphasizing those issues, that should give them a competitive advantage. For example, most voters in 2002 believed that Democrats did a better job handling Social Security and health care (than, say, terrorism). Democratic candidates ought to perform better at the polls when Social Security is considered most important by most voters. On the other hand, if a majority of voters believe that terrorism is the most important problem facing America, then Republican candidates ought to have an advantage on election day. Many factors influence elections (e.g., demographics, war, the economy); however, issue emphasis in campaign messages is important because this variable is under the direct control of the candidates (e.g., an incumbent president may try to reduce unemployment before seeking a second term but there is no guarantee this will occur; challengers have even less control over nonmessage factors).

Issue ownership theory assumes that issue emphasis in candidate messages will influence the importance of those issues to voters (or, at least that candidates assume this is the case). Research supports the power of the news media to influence public opinion (see, e.g., Weaver, McCombs, & Shaw, 2004). Iyengar and Kinder (1987) reported that presidential speeches have more influence on the public's perceptions of the importance of energy and inflation (although not unemployment) than news stories. Research has also established that candidate advertising specifically influences which topics are emphasized by the news media (Roberts & McCombs, 1994). Finally, Petrocik, Benoit, and Hansen (2003-2004) present data which indicate the issue emphases of presidential candidates is associated with the problem concerns of voters. Thus, the available evidence is consistent with the assumption that candidate issue emphasis can influence the public's agenda.

Moreover, experimental research confirms the idea that owing an issue provides an advantage with voters. Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1994) varied whether television spots were attributed to the Republican or the Democratic candidate. Messages from Democrats had more influence when they discussed Democratic than Republican issues. Similarly, ads from Republicans had greater effects when they addressed Republican instead of Democratic issues. Clearly, candidates can obtain an advantage from stressing their own party's issues.

This analysis should not suggest that candidates ought to discuss their own party's issues exclusively. For example, in the 2004 campaign, Democratic candidates could not ignore the war on terrorism even though that is a Republican-owned issue. Sigelman and Buell (2003) show that candidates frequently discuss the same issues; of course, Issue Ownership theory does not expect no overlap in the issues discussed by candidates from different political parties, only differences in issue emphasis. Still, the theory predicts that an advantage should be obtained from emphasizing the issues owned by a candidate's political party. A politician might be able to convince voters that he or she would be better able to deal with a problem owned by the other party, but that is an uphill battle compared with persuading them that he or she can better handle a problem owned by his or her party. So, the expectation is that candidates will discuss issues owned by both political parties, emphasizing their own party's issues.

Presidential candidates tend to emphasize the issues owned by their own political party in general television spots and nomination acceptance addresses from 1952 to 2000 (Petrocik et al., 2003-2004). Both parties tend to emphasize Republican issues, perhaps because the Republican party owns more federal issues (Petrocik et al.). Benoit and Hansen (2004) found that candidates emphasized the issues owned by their own party more, and the issues of the other party less, in primary and general election debates through 2000 (Benoit & Hansen, 2002, show the existence of issue ownership patterns in primary spots as well). Benoit and Stein (2005) confirm issue ownership patterns in presidential direct mail brochures. Brasher (2003) reported that the expected issue ownership emphasis in U.S. senate campaigns. Benoit and Airne (2005) report that gubernatorial ads from 2002 and congressional ads from 1980 to 2002 reflect the predicted issue ownership patterns. Candidates will discuss issues owned by both political parties, but they show a pronounced proclivity to emphasize the issues owned by their own political party.

Less work has investigated the relationship between candidate issue emphasis and voter behavior. Petrocik et al. (2003-2004) present data which indicate (1) the issue emphases of presidential candidates is associated with the "problem concerns of the electorate" and (2) that the problem concerns of the electorate are related to the vote. However, this study looks at vote percentage rather than election outcome, is limited to the elections from 1960 to 2000, and shows a Republican bias of 13 to 14 percentage points. It also employed a slightly different set of issues (the current study substituted foreign policy for religion/morality). Most importantly, it tested a chain of relationships (effects of campaigning on voter issue concerns; voter issue concerns and outcome) rather than directly relating campaign messages to outcomes. The current study considers the relative issue emphases of the two major political candidates and the outcome of each presidential election from 1952 to 2004, every campaign so far which has included presidential television spots.

Issue Ownership theory (consistent with agenda-setting theory; see, e.g., McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Weaver et al., 2004) assumes a relationship between the number of times an issue is mentioned and the importance of that issue to voters. Notice that in one sense the theory does not discriminate between the two candidates: Repeated mentions of an issue by either candidate should increase the perceived importance of an issue. This suggests that candidates ought to discuss the issues owned by their own political party more, and issues owned by the other party less, in their campaign messages. As noted before, candidates may not ignore the other party's issues completely; however, the more a candidate discusses the other party's issues, the more important those issues should become to voters. Accordingly, I predict:

H1. In each election, the candidate whose television spots have a greater emphasis on his own party's issues should win the election.

Testing this prediction will add to our understanding of the effects of issue ownership emphasis in campaign messages on voter behavior.

Method

This study investigates the issue emphasis of presidential television spots from 1952 to 2004. Concordance (Watt, 2005), a computer content-analysis program, applied the word lists for 12 party-owned issues developed in prior research (Petrocik et al., 2003-2004) to the texts of presidential TV spots. Six Democratic issues (education, health care, jobs, poverty, elderly, environment) and six Republican issues (defense, foreign policy, taxes, deficit, crime, illegal drugs) were employed in the analysis. Concordance counts the number of times each word in the "pick list" occurs in a selected text. The data analysis employed four steps.

First, Concordance was used to determine the number of words for all 12 issues in each of the 28 groups of ad texts (candidate, year). Second, the hits for the six Democratic and six Republican issues were summed to provide a measure of the emphasis of the issues owned by each of the two parties. Third, for each candidate, the number of hits for the other party's issues were subtracted from the number of hits for his own party's issues to provide an index of the relative emphasis a candidate's television spots place on his own party's versus the other party's issues (an "own-party" emphasis score). Positive numbers indicate greater emphasis on own-party issues; negative numbers reflect a greater emphasis for the other party's issues; the larger the number the greater the emphasis. Finally, the own-party emphasis score for the two candidates in each election was compared. According to Issue Ownership theory, the candidate with the larger number--the one who emphasized his own party's issues more than his opponent emphasized the other party's issues--should win the election. That is, greater emphasis on one's own party issues should increase the importance of those issues to voters, giving the candidate who emphasized his or her party's issues the most advantage at the polls.

Results

First, the data show that, as indicated by Petrocik et al. (2003-2004), these candidates have a tendency to discuss Republican issues more than Democratic issues: 2021 Democratic issue hits and 2940 Republican issue hits. However, Republicans have an even greater emphasis on their party issues than Democrats (Republican issues received 52% of the total Democratic hits and 68% of total Republican hits; Democrats, of course, had more Democratic hits than Republican candidates, 48% to 32%). (See Table 2 for these data).

With this in mind, there is a clear difference in the issue emphases of winners and losers. Democratic winners have a mean own-party emphasis score of 37.5 (sd 72.3); Democratic losers have a mean own-party emphasis score of -40.9 (sd 27.5). That is, as a group, Democratic winners emphasize Democratic issues more than Republican issues; in sharp contrast, Democratic losers emphasize Republican issues more than Democratic issues. The difference between these two means is 78.2. In fact, every Democrat who emphasized his own party's issues more than Republican issues won the election. Republicans show the same basic pattern, with winners stressing own-party issues more than losers. Republican winners have a mean own-party emphasis score of 74.8 (sd 47.5); losers have a mean of 36.3 (sd 68.9), which is a mean difference of 38.2 between Republican winners and losers.

The hypothesis predicted that the candidate who stressed his own party issues more (than the opponent stressed the other party's issues) should win. Own-party issue emphasis correctly predicted the election outcome in 11 of 14 elections (1952, 1956, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004). That is, the candidate who had the larger own-party emphasis score won most elections. A sign test indicates that this is significantly different from chance (p < .05). Therefore, the hypothesis was supported by these data.

Table 3 shows that Democratic winners stress their own party's issues more than Democratic losers, 60% to 40%. Similarly, Republican winners discuss their own party's issues more than Republican losers, 730 to 62%. Both differences are statistically significant (Democrats: [[chi square][df = 1] = 108.73, p < .0001, [phi] = .2; Republicans: [[chi square] [df = 1] = 29.16, p < .0001, [phi] =. 11). Again, candidates who stress their own party's issues more than their opponent's are significantly more likely to win elections.

Discussion

These data support the notion that emphasis of party-owned issues is related to election outcome. Winners of both political parties stress their own party's issues more than losers. The candidate whose television spots emphasized his party's issues more heavily than his opponent won 11 of the last 14 elections. This is consistent with the predictions of issue ownership theory. A candidate's emphasis on an issue or group of issues could make that issue more important. Assuming the candidate stresses the issues owned by his or her political party, the increased salience may yield benefits at the polls.

Interestingly, the data presented here also suggest that emphasizing the other party's issues could be detrimental to a candidate: Eight of nine Democrats who stressed Republican issues more than their own issues lost (which is significant, according to a sign test, at p < .05) and the only Republican who had more Democratic than Republican hits lost the popular vote. For example, in 2004 John Kerry's ads emphasized Republican issues more than Democratic issues (and in fact 65% of his Republican issue hits concerned defense and foreign policy). It is possible that an effect of Kerry's ads was to heighten the importance of Republican issues (and defense and foreign policy in particular), which may have helped Bush.

Of course, other factors influence election outcome. Some voters may decide more on the basis of character than policy. Some voters may simply vote for the candidate of the political party with which they affiliate, although evidence suggests that the effects of political party affiliation may have diminished over time. Fewer voters affiliate with political parties than in the past (Wattenberg, 1991, 1998; cf. Bartels, 2000). Salamore and Salamore (1985) also argue that those who still affiliate with a political party "reported increasingly weaker attachments, as shown by their propensity to split their tickets" (p. 226). Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the only factor that matters is whether (or how often) an issue is mentioned. Surely a politician can make plausible or cogent as well as implausible or unpersuasive statements about an issue. For example, in 1964 Senator Barry Goldwater emphasized his own (Republican) issues more than President Lyndon Johnson emphasized Democratic issues (Goldwater: 114; Johnson: --62). However, Goldwater was perceived by many as trigger-happy and extremist (in part because of ads run by Johnson) and Goldwater lost the election despite his (and his opponent's) Republican issue emphasis. Nevertheless, the data reported here show a significant association between emphasizing a candidates' own party's issues and winning elections. Furthermore, this factor, emphasis of party-owned issues in one's campaign messages, is particularly important because it is under the direct control of the candidates, unlike other variables.

Another limitation is the fact that these data reflect only 12 issues. Arguably, these are among the most important issues owned by Democrats and Republicans. Petrocik (1996) identified another kind of issue, one that is leased rather than owned: performance issues. Some issues, such as the economy, shift from being owned by one party to the other depending on economic conditions and which party is currently in power (and therefore is likely to receive blame for a poor economy or credit for a strong economy). It is possible that the candidate who discussed the economy more might have an advantage, either because the candidate is praising his accomplishments or attacking his opponent's failures. I conducted a secondary analysis using Concordance to analyze the candidates' use of economic terms. However, in the 3 years in which relative own-party issue emphasis did not correctly predict the election outcome (1964, 1968, 1996), the winner did not discuss the economy more than the loser. Thus, one of the most important performance issues does not appear to account for the years in which the Issue Ownership prediction was not confirmed. It is possible that other issues (beyond the economy and the 12 issues studied here) could have influenced the results.

Future research could examine other message forms (e.g., nomination acceptance addresses or debates) or other levels of office to investigate the relationship between issue ownership emphasis and election outcome. However, because presidential candidates spend far more money, run more ads, and attract more media attention than candidates for other offices, the effect of issue ownership patterns on election outcome ought to be most prominent in presidential campaigns. It would also be interesting to expose voters to political campaign messages, varying issue ownership and candidate political party and measuring issue salience in addition to issue and candidate preference.

References

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Ansolabehere, S., & Iyengar, S. (1994). Riding the wave and claiming ownership over issues: The joint effects of advertising and news coverage in campaigns. Public Opinion Quarterly, 58, 335-357.

Bartels, L. M. (2000). Partisanship and voting behavior, 1952-1996. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 35-50.

Benoit, W. L., & Airne, D. (2005). Issue ownership for non-presidential television spots. Communication Quarterly, 53, 493-503.

Benoit, W. L., & Hansen, G. J. (2002). Issue adaptation of presidential television spots and debates to primary and general audiences. Communication Research Reports, 19, 138-145.

Benoit, W. L., & Hansen, G. J. (2004). Issue ownership in primary and general presidential debates. Argumentation and Advocacy, 40, 143-154.

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Duchneskie, J., & Seplow, S. (2000, December 15). Gore's vote lead totals 540,435. Philadelphia Inquirer, p. A1.

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Petrocik, J. R. (1996). Issue ownership in presidential elections, with a 1980 case study. American Journal of Political Science, 40, 825-850.

Petrocik, J. R., Benoit, W. L., & Hansen, G. L. (2003-2004). Issue ownership and presidential campaigning, 1952-2000. Political Science Quarterly, 118, 599-626.

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Weaver, D., McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. L. (2004). Agenda-setting research: Issues, attributes, and influences. In L. L. Kaid (Ed.), Handbook of political campaign research (pp. 257-282). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Correspondence to: William L. Benoit, Department of Communication, 115 Switzler, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-2310, USA. E-mail: BenoitW@missouri.edu

Table 1 Which Political Party Do You Trust to Do a
Better Job Handling this Issue?

                    Democratic    Republican

Terrorism               30            51
Crime ([dagger])        27            40
Social Security         50            33
Health Care             50            35

Note. Poll by ABC 9/23-26/2002, except ([dagger]) by
Princeton Research Associates 10/ 24-25/2002.

Table 2 Own Party Issue Emphasis in General Presidential
Television Spots, 1952-2004

                     Democratic candidates

          Democratic     Republican     Difference
            issues         issues          (D-R)

1952           9              13             -4
1956          25              52            -27
1960          80              58             22
1964          34              96            -62
1968          49              80            -31
1972          56             117            -61
1976          99              77             22
1980          43              87            -44
1984          48             143            -95
1988          104            145            -41
1992          151             95             56#
1996          68              43             25
2000          262            101            161#
2004          273            297            -24

Total     1301 (48%)     1404 (52%)        -103

                     Republican candidates

          Republican     Democratic     Difference
            issues         issues          (R-D)

1952           68             7             61#
1956           60            30             30#
1960          114            29             85
1964          135            21            114
1968           95             8             87#
1972          151            33            118#
1976           95            76             19
1980          121            92             29#
1984           84            66             18#
1988          176            30            146#
1992           90            46             44
1996           63            21             42
2000           76           162            -86
2004          208            99            109#

Total     1536 (68%)      720 (32%)        816

Note. Figures in bold denote an own-party emphasis advantage
and an election win. Democrat Gore was considered the winner
in 2000 because he received a half a million more votes than
Republican Bush (Duchneskie & Seplow, 2000); the prediction
tested here concerns voters rather than electoral votes.

Note. Figures in bold denote an own-party emphasis advantage
and an election win indicated with #.

Table 3 Party Issue Emphasis of Republican and
Democratic Winners and Losers

                                          [chi square]
                                            [df = 1]
Issues              Candidates             p < .0001

             Democratic   Democratic
              winners       losers

Democratic   694 (60)%    607 (39%)    108.73, [phi] = .2
Republican   470 (40)%    934 (61%)

             Republican   Republican
              winners       losers

Republican   963 (73%)    573 (62%)    29.16, [phi] = .11
Democratic   365 (27%)    355 (38%)

Note. Again, Gore was considered the winner in 2000.