TY - JOUR
T1 - Congruence between voters and parties
T2 - The role of party-level issue salience
AU - Costello, Rory
AU - Toshkov, Dimiter
AU - Bos, Barend
AU - Krouwel, André
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 European Consortium for Political Research
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - congruence
KW - issue salience
KW - political parties
KW - representation
KW - voting-advice-applications
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081284693&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1475-6765.12388
DO - 10.1111/1475-6765.12388
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85081284693
SN - 0304-4130
VL - 60
SP - 92
EP - 113
JO - European Journal of Political Research
JF - European Journal of Political Research
IS - 1
ER -