This piece of research focuses on the impact of education on policy representation. It examines degrees of congruence between political elites and citizens on policy preferences across different policy dimensions, trying to discern whether there is a representation gap between the so-called “winners” and “losers” of globalization. In particular we investigate a) whether the policy preferences of individuals who have lower levels of education are less well represented across Europe, b) whether this representation gap is more evident in European societies that have been hit more profoundly by the economic crisis and c) whether it is related to the ideological orientation of governments. In order to answer these questions we use data from the 2014 European Election Studies and the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey. Our findings significantly suggest the prevalence of a representation gap along educational lines. The effects of the economic context and of government ideology in this gap are, however, predominantly non significant.

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