Does political sophistication moderate how citizens use information to infer left-right distances between parties?

Research identifies numerous factors associated with citizens’ perceptions of party ideologies, including the Left-Right orientations of parties’ election manifestos, governing coalition arrangements, and media reports of party elites’ interactions. We analyze whether citizens’ reliance on these factors varies with their levels of education and political knowledge. In analyses of 50 election surveys from 18 countries between 2002 and 2015, we find that more politically sophisticated citizens attach (modestly) more weight to parties’ election manifestos and media reports of political elites’ interactions, but no evidence that sophistication moderates citizens’ reactions to governing coalition arrangements. There thus appears to be far more homogeneity than heterogeneity in the structure of party placement perceptions.