Competition and the Dynamics of Issue Convergence

• Author: Kevin K. Banda
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14564570
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2015, Vol. 43(5) 821 –845

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14564570

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Article

Competition and the

Dynamics of Issue

Convergence

Kevin K. Banda1

Abstract

Issue convergence theory suggests that candidates should respond to their

opponents by discussing the same issues whereas issue divergence theory

posits that candidates should instead ignore each other and discuss different

issues. Recent studies tend to find evidence in favor of issue convergence,

but these results may be inaccurate because the analyses that generated

them tested dynamic campaign behavior using cross-sectional methods.

Using a dynamic modeling strategy along with television advertising data

drawn from 93 U.S. Senate campaigns in 44 states, 5 election years, and

on 51 issues, I show that candidates increase the attention they devote to

issues as their opponents’ emphasis of these same issues increases and that

candidates do so to a greater extent in competitive than in noncompetitive

elections. This analysis is the first to account for the dynamic nature of issue

emphasis and provides support for issue convergence theory.

Keywords

campaigns, elections, issue emphasis, issue convergence, political advertising

Elections are important characteristics of democratic systems for two rea-

sons. First, elections allow citizens to hold politicians accountable for their

1University of Nevada, Reno, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kevin K. Banda, University of Nevada, Reno, Mail Stop 0302, Reno, NV 89557-0302, USA.

Email: kbanda@unr.edu

564570APRXXX10.1177/1532673X14564570American Politics ResearchBanda

research-article2015

822 American Politics Research 43(5)

behavior while in office. Second, elections provide citizens with the opportu-

nity to choose between competing visions of the proper role of government

on a number of different issues. For citizens to select the candidate whose

preferences best match their own, citizens must learn about candidates’ issue

positions so that they may make comparisons among the candidates. Citizens

can more easily make these kinds of comparisons when candidates discuss

the same issues. Many scholars, chief among them proponents of issue diver-

gence theory (e.g., Simon, 2002; Spiliotes & Vavreck, 2002), argue that can-

didates should only discuss the issues on which they are advantaged, which

suggests that they should rarely discuss the same issues as their opponents.

Other scholars argue in favor of issue convergence theory and report evi-

dence showing that candidates routinely discuss the same issues as one

another during campaigns (e.g., Kaplan, Park, & Ridout, 2006; Sides, 2006,

2007; Sigelman & Buell, 2004).

What drives candidates to discuss the same issues during campaigns? I

argue that candidates’ issue emphases are affected by two key factors over the

course of their campaigns: the issue emphases of their opponents and the

competitiveness of the campaign. Candidates should alter the degree to which

they emphasize an issue in part due to their opponent’s strategy for a number

of reasons. They may do so to (a) contrast their positions with those of their

opponent, (b) respond to their opponents’ attacks, (c) signal that they are

moderate in an attempt to appeal to the median voter, and (d) avoid criticism

from the news media for ignoring an issue. More generally, candidates should

converge to negate their opponents’ actions. These factors should exert a

more powerful influence on candidates’ strategies when elections are com-

petitive than when they are noncompetitive because the electoral stakes are

higher for candidates. Thus, candidates and their campaign staffs may per-

ceive that mistakes may be more costly in competitive elections than in non-

competitive elections.

The extant literature on issue convergence and divergence suffers from an

important methodological limitation in that scholars have used cross-sec-

tional techniques to model dynamic behavior. These tests cannot show evi-

dence of responsive behavior because of the nature of cross-sectional

analyses. I remedy this limitation by treating campaign behavior as dynamic

rather than static and test my theory using data on U.S. Senate television

advertisements collected by the Wisconsin Advertising Project for 51 issues

discussed in 93 general election campaigns spread across 44 states in 5 years.

I use a dynamic modeling technique and find strong support for issue conver-

gence theory. Candidates respond to the issue emphases of their opponents by

converging and do so to a greater extent in competitive campaigns than they

do in noncompetitive campaigns.