What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

• We test experimentally what parties may communicate to improve on their issue ownership.
• Communication about constituency linkages positively affects issue ownership.
• The same holds for communication about issue performance.
• Issue ownership perceptions thereby seem malleable.

Research has documented that issue ownership is an important aspect of voter behaviour. Therefore, issue ownership is an important asset for parties and one that they might try to improve on in order to enhance their electoral chances. Using survey experiments on a representative sample of Danish voters, the paper investigates what messages a party can convey to voters in order to improve its issue ownership – communicating its emphasis on the issue, its position on the issue, its links to the issue constituency, or its performance on the issue – across both valence and position issues. The results show the effectiveness of the latter two communication strategies thereby documenting that parties through their communication may affect voters' perceptions of their issue handling competencies.