Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Most Suitable of Them All?:The Effects of Online Voting Advice Application Use on Citizens’ Electoral Behaviour

This paper investigates the impact of online voting advice application (VAA) use on citizens’ electoral mobilisation and vote choice. VAAs provide users with voting advice by matching their policy preferences with parties’ or candidates’ positions. These web applications have become very popular in many European countries in the past decade. For instance, in the 2006 Dutch General Election, forty percent of the electorate made use of at least one of these tools before the election. Using an experiment conducted in connection with the 2009 European Parliament Election in Ireland, Finland and the United Kingdom (n=1278), we assess firstly whether VAA use influences users’ decision to go & vote and their party/ candidate choice. Secondly, we examine whether different types of VAAs affect users differently. The paper thus contributes to our understanding of voter decision-making and the role of the Internet as a tool for civic engagement.