Are parties responsive to public opinion and, if so, to whom exactly? These key questions continue to be a major topic among scholars of party competition and voter representation. The paper contributes to the long-standing debate in two important ways. Moving scholarly attention beyond the left-right dimension, I study party responsiveness across a heterogeneous selection of six key issue areas, including many of the most salient issues in contemporary European politics. In addition, I integrate recent conceptual advances to study whether parties shift in the same direction as voters and whether these shifts help to reduce party-voter incongruencies. Combining expert survey and election study data, I examine the dynamic linkages between voter preferences and party positions in 220 parties across 28 European countries between 1999 and 2019. I find only limited evidence that parties are responsive to the mean voter. In contrast, I find strong patterns of party responsiveness to supporters across issues. Parties not only tend to shift their positions in the same direction as their supporters, but these shifts also tend to reduce incongruencies. The patterns prove consistent across mainstream and niche parties and the entire EU. The findings carry important implications for our understanding of representation in contemporary European politics.
