Accuracy of Representatives' Perceptions of Public Opinion in Norway

Democratic governments are generally fairly responsive towards their citizens. At the same time, more recent studies demonstrated that they are not equally responsive to all citizens: some people appear to be better represented than others, most notably those with higher incomes, men, and those who are of the dominant race or ethnicity. Both the existence of (variation in) responsiveness and congruence, as well as the (variation in) inequalities in representation triggered a focus on explaining variation in how well representation works. One important element in the different explanations is that representatives need to have information about what citizens want, and that information needs to be balanced in terms of what various groups in society want compared to each other. Whether using their own background or citizens’ participation as source to know about people’s preferences, their views may be biased view simply because who the representative is of who participates. Regardless of the exact source, the result would be that representatives would a) not have a very accurate view of what people want, but also that b) they may reflect some citizens better than others. In this paper we examine the extent to which representatives’ knowledge about their party voters’ preferences is correct and unbiased. Using data from the first round of the Panel of Elected Representatives in Norway and matching opinion data from the Norwegian citizen panel we examine whether legislators’ assessments are correct and whether it reflects different groups in society equally. We find that representatives are quite accurate in assessing their voters’ preferences, overall. Moreover, we find that legislators reflect preferences of men better than that of women. Further, representatives’ own preference strongly predicts their accurateness: the more negative they are about an issue, the more likely they are to underestimate support for it.