Congruence Between Voters and Elected Representatives’ Perceptions on ‘What is at Stake’ in Local Elections in Norway

A commonly held view about subnational elections is that they are considered by citizens, politicians, and the media as second-order compared to first-order, national elections. Because less is ‘at stake’ in subnational elections, voters tend to turn out less and those who do turn out tend to be dissatisfied voters who use a subnational election to voice their discontent about national government. Most of the empirical evidence for a second-order interpretation of subnational election outcomes is based on aggregate electoral data. We present innovative and novel individual level data based on surveys held among voters and elected representatives from municipalities, county, and national assemblies in Norway. We asked how voters used their vote in the local and county elections held in September 2019 and we asked representatives who assumed office in January 2020 how they think voters used their vote. We also asked which issues voters and politicians thought were important issues during the local elections. The results clearly indicate that many voters and politicians do not think that subnational elections are second-order but we also find that voters and politicians disagree on their perceptions about issue salience in local elections. In this paper we systematically explore these differences and we offer a new theoretical model on the conditions under which voters and politicians conceive local elections as important in their own right.