The statements on which voters and parties are positioning themselves form the heart of any VAA. How statements are selected and how they are formulated substantially affects the outcome of a given VAA, the ‘advice’ that is given to voters. This paper seeks to investigate the selection and formulation of VAA statements in a comparative perspective. Concretely, the statements used in a large number of real life VAAs in a diverse range of countries are scrutinized and coded for issue, tone, concreteness, retro- or prospective nature, left- or right-wing formulation etc. We then analyze differences in statement selection and formulation across VAAs. We expect to find differences between countries, elections type, VAA-builders and through time. We aim to gain systematic insight in the effective statements employed in VAAs and in how, and why, statement selection differs across VAA.
