Public issues or issue publics? The distribution of genuine political attitudes YANNICK DUFRESNE* Université Laval, Quebec, Canada CATHERINE OUELLET Université Laval, Quebec, Canada Abstract: There is an inherent conflict between the political marketing model of humans and pioneering theories in electoral behavior research. While political marketing logic implies an issue-based and highly volatile voting behavior, voting theories conventionally assume that positional issues have little effect on how individuals vote, and so parties have little incentive to develop issue-based electoral strategies. However, few people would challenge the role that marketing now plays in the modern campaign process. How can we reconcile these theories? This paper revisits the role and impact of positional issues on voting behavior by testing whether specific issues affect different subgroups of voters as contended by the ‘issue-public’ theory. The results show that previous models underestimate issue voting. Once measurement accuracy is improved and the salience-based heterogeneity of issue effects is taken into consideration, positional issues have non-negligible effects on individual vote choice. Furthermore, salience-based heterogeneity is shown to explain better the variation in issue voting than heterogeneity based on political sophistication. Submitted 8 February 2018; revised 7 June 2018; accepted 3 July 2018 Explaining vote choice necessarily involves examining behavioral patterns. But do all voters follow the same patterns? Most voting models assume that they do. For instance, the Michigan School’s Funnel of Causality posits that the order in which various factors come into play in determining vote choice is the same for all citizens (Campbell, 1960). Moreover, the findings of the early Columbia School studies conceptualize voting behavior by minimizing citizens’ individual input; voters’ choices are constrained by social groups * Correspondence to: 1030, des Sciences-Humaines, Building Charles-De Koninck, Quebec (Quebec), G1 V 0A6, Canada. Email: yannick.dufresne@pol.ulaval.ca Behavioural Public Policy, Page 1 of 22 © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/bpp.2018.28 1 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2018.28 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.162.69.248, on 26 May 2020 at 13:31:19, subject to the Cambridge Core