Credit or debit? The effect of issue ownership on retrospective economic voting

This paper examines issue ownership as a mechanism for understanding how voters’ expectations of parties’ issue competence impact retrospective voting. On the one hand, issue ownership can represent a stock of credit for parties to draw on, which may help incumbent parties escape punishment for poor performance. On the other hand, prior issue competence associations may set certain expectations in voters’ minds. This lends to the idea that parties might be even more severely punished for poor performance when they own the issue. This contribution sets out to test these two propositions. Our results suggest that since voters expect the party to perform well, especially on the issue it owns, positive performance reaps no reward, while negative performance is more severely punished. There are, however, differences across parties, with the chancellor party in government held as the main actor responsible for positive or negative economic developments.