Inequality in Party-voter Opinion Congruence: A Matter of Choices Made or Choices Given?

Abstract

Studies on the agreement, or congruence, between voters and parties have often found more congruence between higher educated voters and the parties for which they vote than between lower educated voters and their party selections. The literature offers two explanations for this finding. The first argues that lower educated voters vote ‘incorrectly’, selecting less congruent parties at the ballot box, despite the presence of a better alternative. The second posits that they lack policy offers for which to vote. This paper seeks to detangle these two explanations. Based on a dataset containing the positions of Belgian voters and parties on 23 policy statements, we find that inequality in opinion congruence is primarily the result of incorrect voting by lower educated voters. However, given Belgium’s political system—which increase the likelihood of policy offers attuned to lower educated voters, the education bias in parties’ policy offers is surprisingly high.