The concept of issue ownership has attracted increasing attention over the past years. Reflecting the broad appeal of the concept, scholars of both electoral behaviour and party competition have included issue ownership in their analyses producing interesting findings. However, both the definition and measurement of issue ownership – often drawn from Petrocik’s seminal 1996-article – is unclear which constitutes a serious drawback to the further development and understanding of both issue ownership and its purported effects. As a step towards a clarification of the meaning of issue ownership the paper reports the results of a survey experiment specifically designed to tap the meaning of issue ownership in the minds of voters. While clear differences are found between measures of associative and competence ownership, surprisingly small differences exist between different operationalizations of these two types of issue ownership. The consequences hereof for the theory are subsequently discussed.
