Shared Class, Shared Opinion? Policy Preference Congruence Between Citizens and Legislators

Abstract Recent studies have shown that policymakers and policy outcomes in advanced democracies are biased against the preferences of less affluent and working‐class citizens. One reason for this inequality in substantive representation might be that most policymakers are well‐off themselves. In this paper, we explore the effect of shared class background on the congruence between legislators' and citizens' policy preferences. To do so, we rely on original data from surveys conducted among citizens and active legislators in Switzerland. We focus on six economic and welfare policy proposals where we find differences in opinion between social classes. When we match legislators' and citizens' opinion in a one‐to‐many relationship, we find that social class matters more for lower social classes than for the more affluent, at least for some policy proposals.