Attempts have been made to integrate issue saliency approaches to electoral competition (issue ownership, issue convergence) with spatial approaches based on issue positions (e.g. KriesiEtAl2006, GreenHobolt2008, GreenJennings2012, SandersClarkeEtAl2011). The current paper develops an integrated model which explains electoral support at the macro-level from issue emphasis and issue positions of parties according to newspapers and television programs used by individual voters. This autoregressive longitudinal model is tested for subsequent national elections in the Netherlands from 1998-2012. For each election campaign survey data were commissioned with regard to the voters’ issue agreement with parties and their perceptions of parties’ issue emphasis, as well as content analysis data with respect to issue emphasis and issue positions of parties according to the media. The results show strong support for issue ownership theory and issue convergence theory, but persistently holding on to issue positions on owned issues pays off less than strategically altering issue positions.
