External publications

Taking a step back: economic performance and issue salience of international trade policy

Nguyen, Quynh
External Publications (2018)

in: Public Opinion Research 31 (1), 25-44

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edx024
Information

Contesting schools of literature argue that trade policy issues are either highly salient or nonsalient to perspective voters. These divergent views obfuscate the fact that trade salience varies significantly over time. This study focuses on the role of citizens’ perceptions of their economic performance relative to national economic trends by combining individual pocketbook perceptions and individual sociotropic considerations of national economic performance to analyze the conditions that cause trade policy to become salient to voters. Using cross-sectional data from multiple waves of the American National Election Studies survey (1992–2012), this study shows that voters are more likely to voice an opinion on trade if they perceive their economic situation to be worse off than the national average.