Political party representatives are frequently in the news: commenting on current affairs; pitching ideas in talk shows or opinion sections of newspapers; or simply because (political) media reports on parliamentary debates. This is particularly true in the run-up to elections, when parties write their manifestoes and want to be visible to voters. Elections are not only moments in which parties establish their policy positions, these are also moments in which parties mobilize support and secure consent. These are thus interesting moments to study political representation. Who influences party positions? And who adapts to them? And can we observe inequalities in this relation? Across three stand-alone papers, this dissertation answers different aspects of these questions. The answer is threefold. First, I find no clear evidence for the influence of one specific income group on political party positions. Instead, I find that economic experts shape the fiscal contours of manifestoes and even determine their positions on specific policies. Thereby they influence individual party positions, but also foster consensus on economic policy across political parties from different ideological backgrounds. I explore the effects of both individual party positions and cross-party consensus and find that high-income voters consequently adapt their preferences to the positions of their preferred party, while when there is a cross-party consensus, those income groups that hold preferences most distant to this consensus adapt the most. In addition to expanding our knowledge with regard to the key questions outlined above, the dissertation adds to theorizing preference formation at the intersection of material self-interest and the discursive context, sheds light on the role of experts in the manifesto-writing phase, and argues that austerity might not trigger popular discontent if consensual.