Are public opinion and expert views of ideological distances between political parties generally consistent?

Question

This question is inspired by two papers I encountered, which came to the same conclusion using different sources to quantify the ideological distance between political parties in various countries: one used public opinion surveys and the other used the Encyclopedia Britannica's description of the party's ideology. (Both papers used a simple, unidimensional Left-Right ideological scale.)What I want to ask here is: is there usually an agreement (this can be quantified e.g. as [inter-rater agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability)) between expert assements of party's ideology and public perception of said ideology? Or is there generally an agreement (between experts and public opinion) at least on the ideological *distance* between parties?

Answer 1

I can't give a full answer but I have seen several studies recently that show people do not answer honestly on even the most rigorous surveys, on certain questions, with certain questioners whom they suspect will not approve their answer.