Congruence between voters and parties: The role of party‐level issue salience

The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of political research 2021-02, Vol.60 (1), p.92-113
Main Authors: COSTELLO, RORY, TOSHKOV, DIMITER, BOS, BAREND, KROUWEL, ANDRÉ
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Congruence
Hypotheses
issue salience
Policy analysis
Political campaigns
Political parties
Political representation
Profiles
Proximity
representation
Voters
Voting
voting‐advice‐applications
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Summary:The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses that (1) average proximity between the positions of voters and the party they vote for will be highest on the issues that the party emphasises in the election campaign and that (2) this relationship will be stronger for niche parties. We test these hypotheses using data on the policy preferences of voters, party positions, party attention profiles and salience on concrete policy issues in four countries: The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. Overall, we find that voter–party proximity tends to be higher on issues that the party emphasises. As these are the issues where parties typically have the greatest policy impact, this implies that the quality of representation is highest where it matters most. There is some limited evidence that the positive relationship between issue salience and proximity is stronger for niche parties. In sum, the quality of policy representation varies strongly with party‐level issue salience and to a lesser extent with the type of political party.
ISSN:0304-4130
1475-6765
DOI:10.1111/1475-6765.12388