As the 2024 U.S. election approaches, a stark divide has emerged in the issues Republican and Democratic politicians focus on in their campaign messaging. While Republicans focus on the economy and immigration, Democrats often talk about abortion rights and threats to democracy.
Polling also shows significant partisan gaps in how voters see the country’s most pressing problems. A May 2024 Pew Research Center survey, for instance, found Republican respondents far more likely to view illegal immigration and inflation as major problems for the United States today. In contrast, Democratic respondents are much more concerned about climate change, gun violence, and racism.
This partisan divide in issue priorities raises intriguing questions about political strategy and voter behavior. Many observers believe that Republicans – like right-wing parties elsewhere in the world – would benefit if voters focused more on the economy or immigration when casting their vote. Conversely, Democrats might gain an advantage if voters prioritized reproductive rights in the 2024 election.
But what drives people to focus on one issue over another, and how malleable are these priorities? How can political scientists – and the public – conceptualize and measure issue importance? Why do some issues rise and fall in prominence? And, ultimately, how do these shifting priorities affect elections and policy outcomes? Exploring these questions in depth offers valuable insights into the mechanics of modern political campaigns and voter behavior.
What is issue importance – and how do we measure it?
While most people don’t obsess over politics, many still care deeply about specific issues. When individuals consider a political issue “personally important,” they engage with it more than other topics.
Most of us can probably name at least one or two issues like this that are important to us personally. We think about these specific issues more frequently, seek out more information – and are potentially even more likely to vote based on them. Political scientists – and pollsters – tag an issue as “salient” to the public when many people begin attaching greater importance to it for whatever reason.
Of course, personal issue importance for individuals and issue salience for the public are also relative concepts. We all have limited time, resources, and mental bandwidth. When voters start caring more about one issue, they may care less about others. An economic crisis or pandemic might take immigration off voters’ minds temporarily. Or an especially hot summer, wildfires, or news of sudden flooding could lead people to put aside their concerns about crime or health care, even when nothing has changed to alleviate those specific concerns.
Political observers and strategists evidently believe that knowing what voters prioritize at a particular point in time is useful. As a result, studying “issue importance” is quite prevalent in political science. However, measuring these concepts has proven tricky. There’s no universally accepted method, and some researchers rightly question how well the importance of specific issues – as stated by respondents in a survey – actually predicts their voting outcomes.
The most common way to gauge what issues the public cares about is through surveys asking about “the most important problem” facing their country. This open-ended question provides a snapshot of the public’s top concerns at a given moment. However, some scholars criticize this method for potentially conflating an issue’s importance with how much of a problem people perceive it to be. Critics also point out that respondents may answer in a way that reflects what they think others care about, rather than their own concerns.
Another common approach is to ask people about their policy opinions and then prompt them about how important these opinions are to them personally. For example, a survey might ask respondents how crucial immigration policy is in shaping their political views or vote choices. The downside here is that a respondent could say that all issues are equally very important to them personally, even if this is not true. This would also contradict psychological findings that people really can only prioritize or think deeply about just a handful of issues at a time.
Researchers are also exploring new ways to measure issue importance. These include more detailed ranking survey questions and innovative techniques like “quadratic voting” experiments that incentivize participants to reveal the issues they prioritize. While promising, some of these methods are also time-consuming. And, like in other close-ended surveys, how researchers word the options and what choices they decide to include can influence the responses.
Why do issues rise and fall in importance?
Nobody fully understands the factors driving issue importance and salience. Media coverage and political rhetoric clearly play a role. When journalists, politicians, and particularly office-holders focus intensely on border security, for instance, more voters start to see it as a pressing concern. However, the media also responds to audience demand. This creates a chicken-and-egg question: Does media coverage drive salience, or does salience drive coverage?
Many people believe that astute media and political elites work hard to shape voter priorities through strategic messaging. However, the situation is more nuanced. Journalists and politicians alike often operate under constraints imposed by current events and the competition for public attention. As a result, they frequently respond to issues that are already gaining traction, leveraging their existing advantages rather than creating new waves of attention.
Do these campaign or messaging strategies actually work? Maybe – the research findings are mixed. Some studies indicate that societal trends and objective conditions often influence issue salience more, in comparison to deliberate partisan agenda-setting. In this perspective, political parties are more likely to succeed by aligning with preexisting public concerns that match their perceived strengths, rather than trying to manufacture new priorities. This might encourage a politician to “ride the wave” of public attention, instead of “making the wave” themselves.
Indeed, real-world events can dramatically shift issue salience regardless of political messaging. Here’s a recent example: President Joe Biden’s age became a burning issue for many voters, in the aftermath of his evidently disappointing performance in the June 27 presidential debate with Donald Trump. The rising and falling political salience of the covid-19 pandemic is another perfect example. Once the virus began spreading rapidly, it became the top concern for voters worldwide, despite varying approaches from political leaders. In 2020, voters paid close attention to incumbent President Donald Trump’s leadership on covid-19. After 2021, as the immediate crisis faded, economic worries climbed back up the list of top issues.
At the individual level, issue priorities reflect several factors. Personal experiences often play a crucial role, as direct encounters with an issue can make it more salient to an individual. Social identity and core values shape priorities, with people focusing on issues that are important to groups they identify with or that align with their fundamental beliefs. Self-interest also influences issue importance, as individuals are likely to prioritize matters in which they perceive they have a personal stake.
The issue of abortion illustrates how these factors may intersect. Personal experiences, such as having had an abortion or knowing someone who has, can heighten the issue’s salience. People’s religious affiliations and beliefs can further inform both an individual’s stance and the importance they place on the issue. Self-interest then factors in as well, particularly for women who may see reproductive choices as directly relevant to their voting decisions.
What is the role of issue importance in voting behavior, elections, and other outcomes?
External events like an economic crisis can quickly become a new worry for people. Some researchers argue that shifts in public issue salience tend to influence changes in voting patterns more than people’s actual policy positions. But the relevance of issue importance extends beyond voting.
After all, people who care deeply about a certain topic are also more likely to take other political actions, like contacting their elected officials or joining mass protests. This means issue importance can also shape policy even when a particular issue doesn’t directly change many votes, especially in polarized two-party systems where partisanship often drives electoral choices.
One crucial way the changes in issue importance can shape political outcomes is through preexisting “issue ownership.” Political parties or politicians “own an issue” if voters perceive them as the most competent authority to solve a particular problem or work on the issue. Issue ownership arises from a party’s history of involvement with certain issues, which itself stems from the makeup of a party’s coalition. Issue ownership is thus a relatively stable characteristic of parties across time.
Naturally, parties and campaigns strategically try to make the public focus on issues that people believe their party is best able to handle. In short, if a party can keep the public focused on “their” issues, they’re more likely to win elections. Republicans thus often historically emphasized national security concerns, while Democrats emphasized social welfare issues. More recently, as we have seen, Republicans have started emphasizing immigration while Democrats have started emphasizing reproductive freedom.
However, as noted earlier, no party or politician can simply elevate a topic to top-issue status overnight without favorable underlying conditions. Instead, effective political strategy involves recognizing shifts in public priorities and tailoring messaging accordingly. This doesn’t mean parties have no influence on issue salience – but rather that broader events and societal factors have a greater power to shape the public agenda.
The influence of “issue publics”
Another crucial way issue importance matters is through “issue publics” – groups of citizens who care intensely about specific topics. These passionate minorities often play an outsized role in shaping policy outcomes above and beyond the conventionally organized “interest groups.” Some group members can also become “single-issue voters” who support a party primarily based on the one topic they care deeply about, regardless of their views on other matters.
Issue publics can be small, yet mighty. These groups still influence election and policy outcomes, as their members are more likely to turn out and base their votes on their key issue. They often engage in activism through protests, letter-writing campaigns, and other forms of political pressure. Group members are also more likely to contribute money to candidates and causes aligned with their views.
The existence of issue publics helps explain why some broadly popular policies fail to become law. Gun control and legal immigration reform in the United States are prime examples. Polls show majority support for these measures. But legislative efforts face fierce opposition from small but highly motivated groups of voters who make these issues central to their political identity. If these voters perceive one party or candidate as better representing their views on their key issue, they are likely to support that party consistently, giving it a strong incentive to maintain its stance.
Understanding issue salience and importance is thus crucial for making sense of modern politics. It’s not just about what people think about policy or their issue positions. How much they care, or their issue priorities, also matters. In a world of information overload, the few issues that manage to capture sustained public attention often shape the political agenda – for better or worse.
Majority opinion clearly matters in democracies. But don’t discount small but loud voices. The intensity of preferences, combined with perceptions of issue ownership, can often be the deciding factor in electoral and policy outcomes.
Related Good Authority posts:
- John Sides and Michael Tesler, “Why Biden was no longer a viable candidate – in one graph.” From July 21, 2024, after Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the Democratic ticket and endorse Kamala Harris.
- John Sides, “What voters say is important doesn’t actually affect their vote.” From May 21, 2024, highlighting that the relationship between personal issue importance and vote choice is not always clear.
- Alexander Kustov, “Immigration opponents are far more passionate than supporters.” From July 2022, explaining why pro-immigration attitudes do not always translate into policy action.
- Michael Tesler, “3 ways the coronavirus could end Trump’s presidency.” From March 2020, as Americans became more worried about covid-19 and Trump’s statements about the virus.
- Sheri Berman, “Racially divisive parties have more voters now, but voters aren’t becoming more racist. What explains this?” From December 1, 2019, explaining why populists thrive when the mainstream left and right shift the focus to identity politics.
Further reading:
- James Dennison, “A review of public issue salience: Concepts, determinants and effects on voting,” Political Studies Review, March 2019, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 436-446.
- James Dennison and Hanspeter Kriesi, “Explaining Europe’s transformed electoral landscape: structure, salience, and agendas,” European Political Science Review, March 2023, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 483-501.
- James Dennison, Alexander Kustov, and Andrew Geddes, “Public attitudes to immigration in the aftermath of COVID-19: Little change in policy preferences, big drops in issue salience,” International Migration Review, December 2023, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 557-577.
- Gallup Historical Trends, “Most Important Problem.”
- Seth J. Hill, Frustrated Majorities: How Issue Intensity Enables Smaller Groups of Voters to Get What They Want (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
- Alexander Kustov, “Do anti-immigration voters care more? Documenting the issue importance asymmetry of immigration attitudes,” British Journal of Political Science, December 2023, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 796-805.
- Philip Moniz and Christopher Wlezien, “Issue salience and political decisions,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, September 2020.
- Timothy J. Ryan and J. Andrew Ehlinger, Issue Publics: How Electoral Constituencies Hide in Plain Sight (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
- Christopher Wlezien, “On the salience of political issues: The problem with ‘most important problem,’” Electoral Studies, December 2005, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 555-579.
Alex Kustov is a 2024-2025 Good Authority fellow.
James Dennison is a professor at the European University Institute.
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