title: .NET MVC MultiSelectList and selected values
body: <p>I am trying to set the selected values for a MultiSelectList but the page does not display any values as selected. I have tried every practical way to do this and still get the same results. I am currently trying to pass a list of selected objects in via the constructor.  What gets me is that when I inspect MultiSelectList object, the selectedvalues property contains the items that I have passed into it using the constructor but it still does not display. </p>
  
  <p>I have noticed that many people are having the same problem but I have not seen an answer that has worked for me. I have tried iterating through the list and setting the selected property to true, I have tried creating the multiselectlist from scratch and setting each individual items selected property and I have tried using the constructor. None of these have worked. I also found an a suggestion that the MultiSelectList property could not be named the same as the control (which I tried) and that did not work. Why is it so difficult to create a dropdown list with selected values using this framework? Am I missing something?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;label for="StatesOfPractice"&gt;States of Practice:&lt;/label&gt;
                      &lt;br /&gt;
                      &lt;%= Html.ListBox("StatesOfPractice", Model.StatesOfPracticeList)%&gt;
                      &lt;br /&gt;
                      &lt;%= Html.ValidationMessage("StatesOfPractice")%&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>Edit 1</h2>
  
  <p>It appears to be happening when I instantiate the MultiSelectList. If I inspect the object in the View and open the Results View I can see that "Alaska" is not selected when I know that it should be.     </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://imgur.com/eTIdH.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://imgur.com/eTIdH.jpg</a></p>
  
  <p>I am instantiating like this. </p>
  
  <pre><code>new MultiSelectList(List&lt;GenericDataContract&gt;, "Code", "Description", List&lt;GenericDataContract&gt;);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The GenericDataContract is simply a class with two properties, Code and Description. The first List is all of the states, the second List is my selected states.</p>