Perceptual accuracy, policy congruence and electoral success of candidates

Abstract Recent research has documented that politicians are not good at estimating citizens' policy preferences, though their ability to do so varies across parties and individuals. The postulated link between this low perceptual accuracy and substantive representation has rarely been explored empirically. We analyse whether politicians' perceptual inaccuracy corresponds to a systematic opinion gap between candidates and their party voters. We also assess whether perceptual accuracy and policy congruence increase the likelihood of being elected among candidates. Our study presents levels of policy congruence between candidates and their party voters across various policy proposals, as well as levels of perceptual accuracy on the same items. It shows that candidates tend to over‐estimate their electorate's level of conservatism. However, this does not translate into a systematic representation gap as candidates have more extreme positions than their electorate. Finally, neither perceptual accuracy nor policy congruence are associated with the likelihood of being elected.