about the degree of economic intervention, all with the aim to find and attract the most electoral support. However, valences issues offer minimal room for parties to form alternative stances on, as voters are all seemingly in agreement about a particular stance. The valence issue of corruption highlights Stokes’s belief in voters having a broad consensus of preferences on certain issues. In an election where corruption becomes an important issue there would not be one party which was pro-corruption and a rivaling party which was anti-corruption. Instead, both parties would oppose corruption and it would be up to voters to decide which party would be best at bringing about an end to corruption. Therefore, valence issues are issues that are used by voters to evaluate a parties competence based on whether the party can most effectively bring about a goal or quality embodied by the valence issue, or, whether the party is to blame or should be credited with a past or present good or condition that is representative of the valence issue. Since Stokes established the valence issue concept it has been applied to polities beyond the U.S. Whereas the original interpretation of the concept was founded on observations Stokes made when reviewing American elections in the thirties and forties; in which Stokes identified economic recovery as a valences issue, the US elections of 1952; where Stokes recognized the Korean war and corruption as two valence issues, and the 1956 and 1960 election; which Stokes’s sees as dominated by the valence issue of U.S foreign policy. Position issues Position issues are an alternative to valence issues, as position issues create disagreement among voters because a broad consensus on the issue is lacking. Since position issues are divisive issues they consequently separate potential voters into distinct voting blocs that may support or oppose a way of dealing with the position issue at hand. Politicians and parties therefore have some maneuverability, policy wise they can arrange themselves more freely than when faced with a valence issue, as they can take a stance on a position issue according to a distinct voter bloc in order to collect voters who are mobilised by this politician's particular position issue perspective. This description of position issues does not mean that valence issues are only about a consensus among voters, instead for positional issues it is also a question of whether the voter decided to support