Who Uses VAAs and for What: Empirical Results from Finland

In understanding people’s voting behaviour we strive to understand also the tools which are used in forming vote choice, especially when it comes to substantive voting. One of the most rapidly developing tools especially used for substantive choices are Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). These online tools help the voter to find a most proximate candidate or party through answers to questions related to policy issues and values. In Finland, a candidate-centered OLPR system, in 2023, 57% of the electorate used VAAs and thus we would expect this to be a most likely case in which a wide array of users engage with the tool before elections. Furthermore, we expect VAAs to be used for different purposes by different groups of citizens. Using data from the two largest news agency VAAs (Helsingin Sanomat and Yle) before the 2023 parliamentary elections we can pinpoint the different user groups of VAAs and compare how these groups differ or are similar in their reasons and purposes of using the online tool. These results will help us understand who uses VAAs and for what purpose and can help us develop better tools for different citizen needs.