The theory of issue ownership posits a positive relationship between electoral support and public attention to issues that a party ‘owns’. Studies have tested several aspects of the ownership perspective, however, an implicit assumption in this influential theory remains practically unexplored. In mediatized politics, the media is the most important source of information and channel of communication between voters and parties. Thus, if the ownership mechanism in fact works - linking parties’ issue strategies, public issue agendas and electoral support - it should be possible to trace changes in party support back to changes in the media’s issue attention. Testing this idea on a dataset combining opinion polls with media data from Denmark, we show that more media attention to owned issues, and more party appearances on owned issues, increase party support. Besides providing support for the ownership theory, the results furthers our understanding of media influence on politics.
