Foreign policy issue ownership, interstate conflict, and U.S. vote intention
Year: 2024

The literature on issue ownership shows that voters use ownership opinions when evaluating parties on salient issues. The audience costs literature shows that interstate conflict can significantly affect voter behavior. Due to these topics being studied in isolation from one another, it is unclear how foreign policy issue ownership interacts with interstate conflict to affect voter behavior. Using a formal model explaining voters' utility for the incumbent party, I theorize that the effect of fo