Sorting your way out Perceived party positions, political knowledge and polarization∗

Political knowledge is one of the most important constructs for political behav-ior research, although scholars often ignore how general knowledge translates into specic information that citizens use to evaluate the party supply. This task is even more complex in multi-party systems. We analyze the accuracy of voter-party placements benchmarked to expert placements in 24 European multi-party systems focusing on the role of general political knowledge given party system characteristics. Our results indicate that while more sophisticated voters view the party system more similar to experts, this dierence is sub-stantially smaller in ideologically polarized party systems. Thus, the required general political sophistication levels for an accurate ordering of parties on the left-right scale are much lower in polarized party systems. Our ndings have important implications for our understanding of how competition can fulll its function of linking citizens and political elites at themoment of democratic elec-tions