This paper uses joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale
surveys to place voters, parties and politicians from different Latin American
countries on a common ideological space. Contrary to the conventional wisdom,
the findings reveal that the “median” voter in Latin America is located to the left of
the ideological spectrum, and that voters’ ideological locations are highly
correlated with their partisan attachments. The location of parties and leaders
suggests that three distinctive clusters exist: one located at the left of the political
spectrum, another at the center, and a third to the right. The results also indicate that
legislators in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru tend to be more “leftist” than their
voters. The ideological drift, however, is not large enough to substantiate the claim
that a representation gap exists in those countries.