Analysis of the first greek vaa

Lessons Learnt from Greece -Analysis of the First Greek VAA

Andreadis I., Chadjipadelis Th. Department of Political Sciences,

Aristotle University of ThessalonikiGreece

2/3/2012 VAA Research – State of the Art and Perspectives

2

Outline of the paper

• Data quality– Data cleaning– Users’ demographic characteristics

• How do they select candidates?– Any evidence of “pure” issue voting?

• Impact of VAAs on vote choice– It depends on the confidence level of initial

selection


3

Helpmevote popularity – sample size

• Helpmevote: First Greek VAA – It was used for the Greek Regional Elections of 2010

• In 20 days (18/10/2010 - 7/11/2010) more than 28,000 users

• 3 ways to collect information:– Position on issues (all users)– Personal information (after the issues, 21000)– Web survey after the use of VAA (5000)


4

Data quality – Data Cleaning

• Time spent to answer each question is less than one second– The user did not have enough time to read,

understand and give a substantial answer to the question

• The pattern of answers – The user has clicked the same button (e.g. "Totally

agree" for all (or almost all) the questions• The final cleaned version of the dataset includes

28014


5

Representative sample? Sex

0,0%

10,0%

20,0%

30,0%

40,0%

50,0%

60,0%

70,0%

Male Female

SampleCensus


6

Representative sample? Age and Region

• Age groups 50-64 and 65+ are underrepresented – 14.1% and 1.9% instead of 21.7% and 21%

• Age group 25-49 is overrepresented– 71.4% instead of 46%

• Athens and Thessaloniki are overrepresented


7

Representative education level?

0,0%

10,0%

20,0%

30,0%

40,0%

50,0%

60,0%

Primary Lowersecondary

Highersecondary

Tertiary Postgraduatestudies

SampleCensus


8

Factors of vote choice

17.6%3.9%Other Candidate

39.4%39.1%Candidate backed by the

party

Other Candidate

Candidate with maximum proximity coefficient


9

Impact on vote choice• Depends on whether the VAA user had chosen

a candidate before using the application.• Undecided > VAA can help them learn the

positions of candidates and choose the most suitable to represent them.

• Decided > two possible outcomes: – i) identical voting recommendation > strengthen the

user's intent to vote for the preselected candidate – ii) VAA does not propose the same candidate > the

VAA recommendation could undermine user's initial selection, and if the influence is strong enough, it can lead to change of voter's position.


10

Undecided voters (38,5%)

100%467100%1902Total

94.9%44368.9%1311Have not selected a candidate after

5.1%2431.1%591Have selected a candidate after helpmevote

%N%N

Intention to abstain before

Total sample


11

VAA proposed the same candidate (%) by confidence level of initial choice

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Not at all A little Quite Very Completely

Confidence level about the pre-selected candidate

VAA

pro

pose

d th

e sa

me

cand

idat

e (%

)


12

Confidence level about the candidate before and after using VAA

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%


Confidence level about the selected candidate

Use

rs in

eac

h ca

tego

ry (%

)

Before VAA After VAA


13

Different Candidate: level of affection by confidence level

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Quite or less Very Completely


Not at all A little Quite or more


14

Intention to change vote choice and follow VAA by conf. level

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%



Cha

nge

min

d an

d fo

llow

VA

A (%

)


15

Conclusions (1/2)• The sample is not representative of the electorate.

– We cannot use the data collected for the estimation of the electoral outcome

• 4 out of 10 voters base their vote choice mainly on their party identification– They have selected the candidate who is supported by their

party, although he/she is not the candidate with whom they have the maximum SDC.

• 4 out of 100 voters have selected the candidate with whom they have the maximum SDC although he/she was not supported by their party “pure issue voters?”


16

Conclusions (2/2)

• VAAs can help undecided voters to choose candidates

• May even influence decided voters by: – proposing the same candidate and affirming

their initial choice or– undermining their confidence in their initial

selection by proposing a different candidate.

Entertainment & Humor

Analysis of the first greek vaa