Voting Advice Applications and their Impact on Elections

Andreadis I., Chadjipadelis Th. Department of Political Sciences, Aristotle University Thessaloniki

Greece

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

2

Voting Advice Applications

• EU profiler (based on Kieskompas, NL)– www.euprofiler.eu– EP 2009: more than 2.5 millions users

• Votematch (based on StemWijzer, NL)– www.votematch.org.uk– Over a million unique users

– The Telegraph version had approximately 788,000 visits

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

3

Description of VAAs

• Provides voting advice by matching voters' policy views with candidates' positions.

• Voters express their views on issues that reflect the most important dimensions of political competition.

• A formula calculates proximity of voters’ positions to the positions of the candidates

• The output of the application is a ranked list of candidates according to calculated voter/candidate proximities.

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

4

Helpmevote popularity – sample size

• Helpmevote: Voting Advice Application (VAA) used for Greek Regional Elections of 2010

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

• On the results page users were able to follow a link and participate in a web survey about helpmevote.

• About 5,000 people responded to this invitation. The presented results are based on the responses of these individuals.

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

5

Impact on voting 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.

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

6

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

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

7

Decided voters (61,5%) Agreement by confidence level

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Not at all

A little

Quite

Very

Completely

Same Candidate Different Candidate

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

8

Same candidate > Strengthens intention to vote candidate

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Not at all

A little

Quite

Very

Completely

Strengthened No change

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

9

Different Candidate: level of affection by confidence level

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Not at all confident

A little confident

Quite confident

Very confident

Completely confident

Not at all affected A little affected Quite-Very-Completely affected

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

10

Different Candidate: Follow proposal by confidence level

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Not at all

A little

Quite

Very

Completely

Follow No follow

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

11

Implications for parties

• New, minor parties– opportunity to disseminate their positions– overcome limited access to traditional media – VAA outcome is based only on proximities – equal opportunities

• Both new and older, well know parties– reach a particular subset of the electorate with

limited political interest

20/4/2011 61st PSA Annual Conference – Panel: EPOP II

12

Conclusions

• VAAs inform citizens about the positions of candidates and parties on important issues of electoral competition

• VAAs help people shape their electoral choice• 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.

• Indications that VAAs can lead to a reduction of abstention rates (needs further research)