A Choice-Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate

Hanretty, Chris; Lauderdale, Benjamin E.; Vivyan, Nick

doi:10.1111/ajps.12470

A Choice-Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate

Hanretty, Chris; Lauderdale, Benjamin E.; Vivyan, Nick

Authors

Chris Hanretty

Benjamin E. Lauderdale

Professor Nick Vivyan nick.vivyan@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Measuring how much citizens care about dierent policy issues is critical for political scientists, yet existing measurement approaches have signicant limitations. We provide a new surveyexperimental, choice-based approach for measuring the importance voters attach to dierent positional issues, including issues not currently contested by political elites. We combine information from (i) direct questions eliciting respondents’ positions on dierent issues with (ii) a conjoint experiment asking respondents to trade-o departures from their preferred positions on those issues. Applying this method to study the relative importance of 34 issues in the UK, we show that British voters attach signicant importance to issues like the death penalty which are not presently the subject of political debate and attach more importance to those issues associated with social liberal-conservative rather than economic left-right divisions.

Citation

Hanretty, C., Lauderdale, B. E., & Vivyan, N. (2020). A Choice-Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 64(3), 519-535. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12470

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Aug 6, 2019
Online Publication Date	Feb 25, 2020
Publication Date	Jul 16, 2020
Deposit Date	Jun 17, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Feb 25, 2022
Journal	American Journal of Political Science
Print ISSN	0092-5853
Electronic ISSN	1540-5907
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	64
Issue	3
Pages	519-535
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12470

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Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Hanretty, Chris, Lauderdale, Benjamin E. & Vivyan, Nick (2020). A Choice-Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate. American Journal of Political Science 64(3): 519-535 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12470. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.