Democratic representation depends on the relationship between political parties and voters. Yet research has focused almost exclusively on whether parties' policy positions match voters' preferences, overlooking a fundamental question: whom are parties actually talking to? Political parties regularly appeal to specific social groups—women, workers, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, young people, and others—in their campaign communications. These group appeals matter because once in office, parties shape policies affecting social groups' access to resources, power, and equitable treatment, and group appeals signal which voter constituencies parties claim to represent. Without understanding which groups parties appeal to, we cannot fully evaluate whether democracies represent all citizens fairly.
The current knowledge gap about parties’ appeals to social groups of this kind exists partly because analyzing group appeals across countries and time periods was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. The GAPREP project tackled this challenge by developing automated text analysis methods using supervised-LLMs to detect and measure group appeals in party manifestos.
The project analyzed over 850 election manifestos from eight European democracies (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, and UK) spanning 1970-2025, creating the first comprehensive cross-national database on parties' group appeals. We also conducted survey experiments in Ireland and the UK to test whether voters actually feel represented when parties appeal to groups they belong to.
The project provides researchers worldwide with tools and data to study previously unmeasurable aspects of representation. The output sheds light on which social groups receive political attention and which remain marginalized as well as reveals voters’ evaluations of parties’ representative intentions, both are aspects that matter for democracy. Understanding which groups parties claim to represent helps citizens make informed voting decisions, enables systematic assessment of political inclusiveness, and contributes to strengthening democratic trust and legitimacy across Europe.