The meaning of “tend to be better”

Question

I was reading a book when i faced the sentence below.

Our national representatives tend to be better than our local ones.

What's the meaning of "tend to be better" in this sentence?

Note 1: I get the main point of it, The local representatives (e.g. local politicians) are weaker than the national ones.
But I want to translate this sentence, And the problem is that i don't find a suitable synonym for "tend to be better".

Note 2: There is a similar question here. But the explanations the users gave are not enough for me to understand and do the translation.

Answer 1

"To tend" is the intransitive verb form of the noun "tendency":

tendency (n): a likelihood to happen or to have a particular characteristic or effect:

Examples:

She has a tendency to work late -> She tends to work late.

I have a tendency to hum when I'm thinking -> I tend to hum when I'm thinking.

In your example, "X tends to be better than Y" means that X is likely to be or is more often better than Y. You can use this structure in a variety of ways:

She tends to wake up earlier than her sister.

I tend to be more meticulous than my coworkers.

They tend to be taller than the average for that region.