The correspondence between citizens' preferences and the preferences of the elected politicians is a critical concern of democratic institutions. Models founded on the central tendency of politicians' behaviour in elections, such as the median‐voter model and the model of the “uncovered set”, predict that politicians respond to local demands. Other models, notably those that assume imperfectly informed citizens and representatives, predict lack of response. The present article relies on a demand model. We estimate the model by combining survey data for 80 Norwegian municipalities with information on economic, social and demographic factors. The study uses independent surveys to measure the spending preferences of citizens and representatives. The politicians' and the citizens' demand functions are structurally similar, and the article demonstrates that the spending preferences of the representatives are positively related to preferences of the electorate. Alternative interpretations of these findings are disc