Voting Advice Applications

Abstract

During recent years, pre-election online tools such as Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have spread in Europe and beyond. These tools compare users’ policy positions with parties’ positions and at the end show the proximity between users and parties with a one- or multi-dimensional space. The ongoing research on VAAs has focused on different topics: First at all the user description was the main goal of VAA research. However, more and more the individual effects of VAAs become one of the main interest in VAA research. Besides there are several studies that use VAA data to position political parties on an n-dimensional space. Recently VAAs on different political levels were developed and VAA research now deals with tools at European, Regional or Local Level. From this point of view, new questions need to be asked: What different effects do VAAs have on National or Local Elections? Do VAAs need different methods for different political levels? In this Panel, we will discuss several VAAs from Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Czech Republic and beyond. Papers in this panel focus on different questions: Who uses VAAs and why? What effects can VAAs have on their users or on parties? What methodological problems need to be solved providing VAAs? How can parties be positioned with VAAs?

Title	Details
Mobilizing Effects of Voting Advice Applications at Local Elections. A Review of the German Lokal-o-Mat	View Paper Details
The Hungarian Voting Advice Application 'Vokskabin'	View Paper Details
Funny Toys or Useful Tools? VAAs’ Role and Impact in Electoral Campaigns	View Paper Details