The Ideological Congruence Illusion: The Impact of Valence

Considerable evidence has been generated to establish that "ideological congruence," that is, a close matching of government policy positions with median leftright voter opinion, generally prevails in liberal democracies. Based on a cross-national analysis of election survey data, this article challenges that view and elaborates an alternative perspective. In this perspective, nonpolicy or valence considerations strongly influence vote choices and electoral outcomes in a directional sense—sometimes favoring the Left overall, sometimes the Right. Partly as a result, government positions typically deviate substantially from median opinion, forming a pattern that is clearly bilateralist or two-sided rather than center-concentrated.