Weber, WiebkeSaris, Willem E.2017-03-292017-03-292011-01http://hdl.handle.net/10230/28326The major body of the literature about individuals’ left-right orientation assumes that individuals’ values and attitudes towards different issues will, besides other factors, determine their position in the left-right dimension. Regarding values, it is assumed that these are stable over (a long period of) time and hence, affect individuals’ left-right orientation. But as issue preferences change over time, cross-nationally and in their importance for individuals, the relationship between issues and left-right orientation is less clear. We argue and show with data from the European Social Survey (2002/03) of the Netherlands that the relationship between the opinions about or the attitude towards issues and left-right orientation is moderated by issue salience which means the importance people assign to the issues. Those which are important for them affect their left-right orientation, while they may use the latter to form an opinion about an issue which is not important for them.application/pdfengThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properlyattributed.info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaperinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess