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Benadrukken partijen eigen thema's in verkiezingstijd ? : Een onderzoek naar thematische aandacht van Nederlandse partijen rond de verkiezingen van 1994 tot en met 2012

Authors
  • Fleur Vis
  • Jonas Lefevere orcid logo

Abstract

Issue ownership theory argues that the public considers some parties as more capable to handle certain issues. Issue ownership is important, because parties tend to receive more votes if their owned issues dominate the campaign. Consequently, issue ownership theory expects parties to emphasize issues they own, while ignoring issues owned by their competitors. This study investigates to what extent Dutch parties emphasized issues they own, before and after the seven Dutch national elections held between 1994 and 2012. lt uses a detailed content analysis of tour Dutch newspapers, that tracked parties' issue attention. The results show that parties tend to emphasize owned issues more, both compared to other issues and compared to their competitors. A surprising finding is that parties tend to emphasize owned issues more during the formation period compared to the campaign. Moreover, government parties emphasize owned issues less than opposition parties.

How to Cite:

Vis, F. & Lefevere, J., (2016) “Benadrukken partijen eigen thema's in verkiezingstijd ? : Een onderzoek naar thematische aandacht van Nederlandse partijen rond de verkiezingen van 1994 tot en met 2012”, Res Publica 58(3), 269-291.

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Published on
29 Sep 2016
Peer Reviewed
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