Interests Groups and Inequality in Perceptions of Public Opinion

Concerns about inequality in representation figure prominently as research shows that politicians are more responsive towards affluent segments of the population. The question is whether politicians consciously decide to act in line with affluent citizens or do so because they misperceive public opinion to be more in line with affluent citizen than it is. We shed light on this question by leveraging new datasets from Denmark and the Netherlands that contain information about the positions of citizens on specific policy issues and how elected representatives estimate public opinion towards the issues. First, we examine whether there are inequalities in perceptions of public opinion with politicians’ assessment of public opinion disproportionately reflecting the view of different types of privileged voters. Second, we scrutinize how inequalities in perceptions are associated with political contacts with organized interests and background characteristics of the elected representatives. Our results have important implications for understanding the dynamics of (inequalities in) democratic representation.