Thus far, our investigations of how Americans determine which party is better able to handle particular issues have come up short. The American electorate neither accords issue ownership to parties because it prefers their policies nor because the parties deliver superior performance. This chapter explores the final proposed explanation for issue ownership: the priorities hypothesis. It proceeds from the definition of prioritization introduced in Chapter 2: a party’s commitment to devoting scarce time, resources, and political capital to address consensus goals. It analyzes the parties’ priorities through the familiar triumvirate of considering the party as organization, the party in the electorate, and the party in government.

I find that the priorities of all three elements of the parties are strongly correlated with issue ownership. For the past four decades, party elites and party voters have consistently said that their parties’ owned issues are more important problems than other issues, that they should be high governmental priorities, and that spending on these issues should be increased compared to other issues. These priorities are reflected by the party in government, as when they are in power in Washington, Democrats and Republicans spend more federal dollars and enact more major legislation on their parties’ owned issues than other issues.