VAAs and Their Effect on Affective Political Polarization

To help citizens decide what to vote, VAAs focus on the differences between the political parties in an election. VAA users report more confidence and increased political knowledge  (e.g., Kamoen et al. 2015) and also a higher motivation to cast their vote or turn-out (e.g., Munzert & Ramirez, 2021). Still a relatively open question is whether VAA use affects political polarization. Affective polarization is wide-spread among voters in western democracies (Garzia et al., 2023) and undermines social cohesion. Research shows that citizens might shift from initially moderate to more extreme positions due to selective exposure to similar views (e.g., in partisan media) (e.g., Thurner et al., 2025). Accordingly, VAA use might work against polarization by offering a myriad of possible views and by correcting misperceptions of outgroup views. This idea is supported by research on the effects of VAA usage on affective polarization (Ferreira da Silva et al., 2025). Other research (e.g., Webster en Abramowitz 2017) suggests that citizens may develop more extreme positive feelings towards the in-group holding similar views, and more extreme negative feelings toward the out-group of people voting for other parties than ‘their’ party. Based on this, VAA use would possibly lead to an increase in polarization. We investigated self-reported affective polarization in relation to VAA use in a small scale post-(national) election quantitative study (N=163) among highly political-interested voters. Respondents had all used one or more VAAs for these elections. Asked whether they felt more positively about the parties that were most close to them in the VAA result, a majority answered agreeingly, whereas about one quarter was neutral and a relatively small proportion answered negatively. When asked whether after their VAA use they felt less understanding for people who voted for parties that were low in their own results ranking, only a small proportion agreed and a majority answered neutrally. Both answers seem to indicate VAAs do not contribute to (further) polarization. Affective polarization as affected by VAA use was assessed more deeply and thoroughly with a qualitative interview question amongst young voters (N=90) in local Dutch elections who had either used Stemwijzer or Kieskompas.