A valence issue is a political issue where there is a broad amount of consensus among voters. As valence issues are representative of a goal or quality, voters use valence issues to evaluate a political party’s effectiveness in producing this particular goal or quality.[1]
The valence issue concept is a way of theorizing about how voters are motivated to vote for competing parties in an election.[2] The concept was developed by Donald Stokes’s critique of voting behavior theories which Stokes foresaw as being too confined to ideas about a voter’s rationality and ideological impulses, as with spatial models of party competition.[3] Since Stokes noticed during an overview of historical U.S. elections that voters sometimes were not bound by self-interest or ideology.[4]
Valence issues can be contrasted and opposed to position issues, as position issues are organised by a voter’s ideology and their inclination for a selection of competing interests, rather than organised by the feelings of consensus found within valence issues.[5] As valence issues can shape the outcome of an election and therefore a future government, voters and politicians both adjust their behavior according to valence issues.[6]