Competence is central to elections and it is therefore central to political elites. The concluding chapter reflects on the theoretical and empirical insights offered in the book through its three ways of thinking about public opinion about competence: as relatively stable issue strengths, or reputations on different policy issues (ownership), as short-term fluctuations in issue ratings (performance), and as the general way in which parties are rated to be competent, or incompetent (generalised competence). The chapter considers how the data demonstrated throughout the book might cause researchers to re-think what they think of as ‘issue ownership’ and what the implications of this might be. It outlines how the findings on ownership, performance and competence contribute to understanding across a range of fields, such as theories of party competition, understanding of elections, costs of ruling, and the responsiveness and accountability of political elites on policy performance. The chapter concludes that party policy reputations, political campaigns and the importance of competence are – to a large extent – the outcomes of events rather than under the control of political parties and governments. This challenges the notions that political power is used to frame and condition the basis of electoral choice; politicians have to respond to the politics of competence as much as they are the drivers of it.