Do Right-Wing Populist Parties Reduce Representational Gaps? Issue Congruence Between Voters and Representatives in the 2013 and 2017 German Federal Elections

In recent years, several studies have shown that representation is biased in favor of better-off groups. Parliamentarians are recruited from higher ranks of society, their opinions are more in line with the preferences of better-off citizens and decisions often reflect the preferences of the rich. However, it is less clear how the rise of right-wing populist parties affects representation. In this paper, we undertake a first step to fill this research gap. We analyze whether right-wing populist parties increase opinion congruence between citizens and representatives through their electoral success. Looking at the case of Germany, we will examine whether the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which first entered the Bundestag in 2017, has led to a higher ‘many-to-many’-congruence between representatives and represented. In our analysis, we use three wave of the GLES candidate study and match it to a representative survey of the German population. We use twelve items to measure opinion congruence before and after the AfD entered parliament. The analyses show that the overall congruence has increased mainly because AfD-parliamentarians’ views on migration are more in line with those held in society and because other parties have taken up more restrictive views on immigration. However, beyond immigration, the congruence between the AfD parliamentarians and survey respondents is not equally high.