Elites and Voters

Abstract

Do politicians systematically misperceive the preferences of their voters? This potential source for the widely debated crisis of representation has so far been understudied despite its increasing relevance in times of populist parties’ and leaders’ rise. While surveys have often asked voters to estimate the positions parties or political leaders on policy issues or dimensions, we do not have much evidence on how accurate elites' perceptions of where the public lies are. This panel builds on this kind of evidence to analyse how those perceptions and information processing have consequences on how political elites communicate, mutual trust between elites and voters, and responsiveness of governments to public opinion.