Issue ownership trends and tensions in 2008: Obama, the transformative Democrat?

• Author: Cole, Hayley J.

The 2008 election was like no other presidential election in American history. The Republican Party nominated a woman, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, as its vice presidential nominee and the Democrats nominated Senator Barack Obama, the first Black man to run on a major party ticket and win the presidential nomination. News channels devoted more resources than ever to the spectacle of the campaign, giving attention to everything from candidates' sense of fashion, to race, gender, and even the issues. This study works to get past the pundits and the overall media representations to better understand where the candidates stood on the issues. Thus, the purpose of this study is to know what issues the candidates were mentioning and if the candidates were engaging issues that were important to the people. It seeks to answer this question using content analysis of nomination acceptance speeches and presidential debates to compare the frequency with which candidates mention specific issues with the public's perceived issue ownership as depicted in polling data. We will review issue ownership theory and past research that has explored this theory followed by a presentation the data from the 2008 general election presidential debates and nomination acceptance speeches.

ISSUE OWNERSHIP THEORY

The theory of issue ownership, as it applies to presidential campaigns, was initially developed by Petrocik's (1996) content analysis of the 1980 election and has been tested in a variety of locations, such as campaign advertisements and media reports (Benoit & Hansen, 2002; Benoit & Stein, 2005; Benoit, 2004, 2007; Damore, 2004; Hayes, 2008; Petrocik, Benoit, & Hansen, 2003; Petrocik, 1996), primary debates (Benoit & Hansen, 2002, 2004a; Benoit, 2004), nomination acceptance speeches (Benoit, 2004; Petrocik et al., 2003), and general election debates (Benoit & Hansen, 2002, 2004b; Benoit, 2004). This study continues issue ownership scholarship through its application to the nomination acceptance speeches and general debates in the 2008 presidential election, thereby extending the conversation into a new time frame and political context but maintaining the textual stage set by past research.

Issue ownership theory posits that Democrats and Republicans "own" certain issues (Petrocik, 1996). According to this theory, voters perceive that the two main political parties have a certain set of issues that they handle well (Benoit & Hansen, 2004a). The issue sets are based on the strength of handling certain issues over time, is reinforced by politician ideology, and is relatively stable (Benoit & Hansen, 2004a). As an election strategy, this theory states that candidates emphasize their owned strengths and make the argument that handling those issues will be better suited to resolve the problems within the current political environment (Petrocik, 1996). One goal of issue ownership as a strategy is to set the issue agenda for citizens and the media so that it favors the candidate's owned issues (Petrocik et al., 2003). It should be noted that, in a strategic context, issue ownership is helpful at arguing for swing voters and also for targeting the base of each particular party, because candidates talk about the issues that they and their party are deemed better at handling (Petrocik, 1996). Petrocik (1996) asserts that Democrats are perceived as owning and resolving the environment and social welfare issues best, such as: health care, education, poverty, and the elderly. On the other hand, the public perceives Republicans as owning foreign policy, defense, the economy, and issues related to government spending, inflation, and taxation (Petrocik, 1996).

Petrocik's (1996) case study of the 1980 election shows that candidates and political parties own certain issues and that ownership of issues is built on reputation over time. This dedication to certain issues has further developed the public's perception of each party's, and by association each candidate's, competency in handling particular issues. These expectations allow for a sense of comfortable predictability, so much so, that some people cast their vote in elections based on the party's issue focus regardless of the candidate (Jackson, 1975). In short, issue ownership provides a heuristic device to voters, which allows them to make decisions based on party lines without knowing a candidates' exact stance on issues. However, such a heuristic is only valid in the case that issue ownership is relatively stable.

Issue ownership is based on the social cleavage theory of political parties, which conceives of political parties as demographically and socially distinct groups with competing political needs and agendas (e.g. Lipset & Rokkan, 1967). Following this theoretical perspective, political parties naturally focus on specific issues that are important to the groups they represent. After time, the public views each political party as handling certain issues well which leads to the perception of issue ownership. Each party's long-term reputation, as well as recent performance concerning specific issues, remains prominent in voters' minds when they go to the polls (Petrocik, 1996). A party's recent performance on an issue affects issue ownership if the party has recently had little success with a particular issue and are often owned by challenging candidates (Petrocik, 1996).

Past scholarship has indicated that there is inter-election variability of issue ownership findings (Petrocik et al., 2003). When an issue does change from one to the other party, this switch tends to represent a lease on that particular issue rather than a permanent ownership change. Such temporary ownership changes usually revert back to the original party in the next election (Petrocik, 1996). We argue that this variability is more than minute differences in individual elections, but instead embodies a trend that forces scholars to reconsider the assumptions of issue ownership theory and reexamine the issues owned by each political party. Further, we argue that changing campaign strategies, namely the microtargeting of swing voters, influences this change.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE 2008 ELECTION

The 2008 election was unlike any other. But, was this election also different due to the ownership of issues by the candidates and their parties? This project seeks to analyze this question. According to issue ownership theory, it should have been predictable that the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war (POW) who worked closely with the Bush Administration, would engage the issue of national security more than any other issue. This is because the Republican Party tends to invest in this issue, especially since the events of September 11, 2001. Additionally, Campbell and Chollet (2007) stated that "perhaps more than any presidential contest, since 1980 or even as far back as 1968, 2008 will be a national security election" (p. 192). Given the circumstances, the Republican candidate should also be expected to engage in Republican owned issues more than the Democratic candidate because the Democratic candidate will have to own Democrat issues to appeal to the Democratic Party base. Additionally, issue ownership theory predicts that the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, would engage Democrat issues as well as Republican issues.

However, in 2008 the political environment changed with the economic collapse. The 2008 polling data suggested inconsistency between actual issue ownership trends in 2008 and Campbell and Chollet's (2007) prediction that the 2008 election would be a national security election. During the general election of 2008 the economy was the most important issue to voters (Rasmussen Polling Report, 2007-2008, August-October; Saad, 2008; Washington Post-ABC News, 2008), which suggested that there was a major shift away from the national security political environment of post 9/11 elections toward an economic issue political environment. Adding to the uniqueness of the 2008 campaign, polling also showed that voters perceived Democrats to better handle some of the typically Republican owned issues (Rasmussen Polling Report, 2007-2008, August-October; Washington Post-ABC News, 2008). Research on this shift suggests that the national security issue may have switched to a Democrat owned issue in 2008 because of how President Bush handled the Iraq War (Goble & Holm, 2008). These historic factors, along with the beginning of a shift in campaign strategy due to microtargetting, position the 2008 election as an excellent site for exploring general partisan trends and the assumptions of issue ownership theory by testing the theory in a rather novel political environment.

ISSUE OWNERSHIP RESEARCH

The most common finding in the issue ownership literature is that Democrats addressed Democratic issues more than Republicans and that Republicans addressed GOP issues more than Democrats (Benoit & Hansen, 2004a; Petrocik et al., 2003). This is one of the most consistent findings within the issue ownership literature. Therefore we expect that such a relationship is likely to occur within the context of the 2008 election:

Hypothesis 1: The Democratic candidate engages Democratic issues more than the Republican candidate and the Republican candidate engages Republican issues more than the Democratic candidate.

One of the more interesting findings within the issue ownership literature is the tendency for Democrats to engage in more Republican owned issues during the general election than GOP party members engage in Democrat issues (Benoit & Hansen, 2004a; Petrocik et al., 2003). Petrocik, Benoit, and Hansen (2003) explain this result:

Democratic issues are consistently, prominent in American politics, but they are relatively few in number. As a result, most of the problems that a President is expected to handle are GOP issue-handling specialties. Democrats' campaigns emphasize GOP issues more...