In national politics, parties take diverging positions along several dimensions and each emphasize different issues. However, do these ideological differences exist on the local level as well? Local politics is often conceived as largely outside the political (i.e., partisan) sphere and merely factual and harmonic. It is said that local political actors commonly strive for a single best solution to local issues. This paper investigates to what extent local party competition is driven by ideological opposition. I assess whether there are substantial ideological differences between local parties by analyzing 200 local manifestos in the context of Flanders (Belgium). Using computational methods - Wordscores and a BERT-model - I examine variance in local parties’ left-right positions and issue salience, respectively. Based on institutional isomorphism theory and the franchise party model I expect a larger ideological distance between different parties operating in the same municipality than between branches of the same party in different municipalities.