‘Do the Vote Test’: The Electoral Effects of a Popular Vote Advice Application at the 2004 Belgian Elections

Abstract

This paper assesses empirically the electoral impact of an immensely popular Vote Advice Application and TV show ('Do the Vote Test') during the 2004 Belgian election campaign. Vote Advice Applications are becoming more popular in several Western countries and ever more voters get a voting advice during an election campaign. Drawing on a large panel of Internet users, the study systematically compares users and non-users of this Vote Advice Application, testing whether getting a personal vote advice made any difference. We find that 'Do the Vote Test' indeed has affected Belgian voters' final decision but at the same time these effects were modest. Some parties gained some votes due to the 'Do the Vote Test', and others lost some votes, but probably the application did not strongly affect the overall election outcomes. Finally, we show that people's subjective perceptions of the impact of 'Do the Vote Test' on their actual electoral behaviour are often contradictory.

Matching voters to parties: Voting advice applications and models of party choice

“…Mykka¨nen, personal communication, 2009). High user figures have also been reported in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland (Germany: 6.7 million VAA recommendations or 11 per cent of the electorate in 2009; Bundeszentrale fur politische Bildung, 2009; Belgium: a million users or 13 per cent of the electorate in 2004, Walgrave et al, 2008; Switzerland: over a million users or 21 per cent of the electorate in 2007, Ladner et al, 2008, p. 4). VAAs are clearly not just another passing Internet gimmick.…”

Estimating parties’ policy positions through voting advice applications: Some methodological considerations

“…The proliferation of these data has effectively enabled political scientists to put many empirical questions under rigorous tests. In particular, researchers investigated whether VAAs influence voting behaviour (Marschall and Schmidt, 2008;Walgrave et al, 2008;Garzia, 2010), participation and voter turnout (Fivaz and Nadig, 2010;Hartwig, 2010;Ladner and Pianzola, 2010), and have used VAA data to test questions relating to voting behaviour, pledge fulfilment, policy congruence and the dimensionality of political space (Schwarz et al, 2011;Talonen and Sulkava, 2011;Katsanidou and Lefkofridi, 2012;Wheatley et al, 2012).…”

Smartvote.lu: usage and impact of the first VAA in Luxembourg

“…Conversely, a limited impact was observed for the Flemish VAA based on the "Do the vote test" TV show. A sample of 7,500 users indicated that more than 90% of the panelists who watched the TV show or got personal voting advice from the website denied that the VAA affected their vote (Walgrave et al, 2008).…”