Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: Variations in voter-party congruence have been studied extensively. Citizens and their representatives are matched in broad ideological terms by conceptualizing congruence using their spatial positions on the left-right dimension. The literature has thus neglected measuring congruence on specific issues. This has an unfortunate ramification: The salience voters attach to those issues, a central theme in issue voting, is not being taking into account as an explanatory factor for differing congruence levels. The present study aims at closing this gap. Borrowing from the voting behavior and social psychology realm, it suggests that issue salience plays a vital role in voter-party congruence. Namely, higher levels of issue salience correspond to higher levels of voter-party congruence on that issue. The study draws on the new EUANDI dataset that, for the first time on an EU-wide cross-sectional basis, includes data not only on identically worded voter and party preferences for 28 issues, but also on their respective salience scores in the context of the 2014 European Parliamentary elections. Albeit a small effect magnitude, the analysis of three distinct topics, unemployment, environment and EU-austerity, reveals that indeed citizens with a high salience on these issues do have a higher congruence with their preferred party.