Position blurring/ambiguity is a strategy that some parties adopt to appeal broadly to a diverse group of voters. Recent research suggests that the strategy may help parties win elections, especially if the parties can convince voters that they are closer to their preferred position. What we still do not know, however, is how voters perceive ambiguous parties’ issue positions. Following the projection literature, we argue that ambiguity exacerbates the effects of subjective party affinity on how close and distant voters perceive political parties. While we know that voters perceive parties they like as closer to them and those they dislike as more distant than where the parties are (assimilation and contrast effects), we argue that these effects are especially strong for those parties who adopt ambiguous issue positions and especially on issues that respondents personally find highly important. We test our expectations using an original cross-national survey with both citizens and experts across ten advanced democracies that asks both groups of respondents their perceptions of party positions on the left-right scale and on six issues (covering both economic and social issues), party like-dislike evaluations of citizens, and personal issue salience.