Almost every fifth voter in Switzerland visited the Voting Advice Application (VAA) smartvote prior to casting a ballot in the 2011 Swiss federal elections. Surveys among users reveal that the web application led voters to discover suitable candidates or parties which they previously would not have considered as a vote choice. The ultimate question for VAA research and with respect to the election outcome therefore is whether the VAA initiates a change in party choice among users. In the context of the 2011 Swiss federal elections, we examine whether voters who used the Swiss VAA smartvote were more likely than non-users to change their vote choice between elections. Moreover, we take a look at which parties might have benefited from a voter flow among smartvote users. We employ both selection models and propensity score matching for analyzing data from observational studies. According to our results, smartvote users were significantly more likely to swing vote in the election. Voter migration among smartvote users was most prominent towards the Green Liberal Party, one of the two major winners of the 2011 Swiss federal elections.
