In many multiparty democracies, a substantial part of the electorate experiences difficulty in deciding which party to vote for. It is in these countries that we see the rise of online Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). One of the goals of these tools is to increase their users’ political knowledge and help them decide which party to vote for. The current research reports about two studies during the Dutch municipal elections of 2014: a two-wave survey study in the city of Gouda and a second study of a group of panelists from the Utrecht municipal panel. In these studies we establish whether VAA usage increases political knowledge and affects vote choice by comparing the knowledge scores and vote preferences across time for the VAA users and the non VAA users.
