Issue Ownership and Agenda Setting in the 2019 Swiss National Elections

Abstract

The 2019 Swiss national elections were characterized by the unusual prominence of two issues, environment and gender, whereas two staples of Swiss politics, immigration and Europe, were less dominant compared to previous elections. We study how, in this context, the media and party agenda were linked to issue ownership. Specifically, we consider whether political parties that own an issue could lead the media agenda and the agenda of other parties. Our analysis relies on all tweets and press releases of major Swiss political parties from January to October 2019 and 37,225 newspaper articles published during the same period. Results show, first, that the agenda-setting capacity of parties was restricted to the issue that received the least attention during the campaign (gender), and second, that the link between issue ownership and agenda setting is ambiguous. These findings suggest that during election campaigns, agenda setting may be largely exogenous to both parties and media. ∗Department of Political Science, University of Zurich (https://fabriziogilardi.org). †Department of Political Science, University of Zurich (https://theresagessler.eu). ‡Department of Political Science, University of Zurich(https://maelkubli.ch). §School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin (https://muellerstefan.net).