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

Abstract

Online voting advice applications (VAAs) have become very popular and may significantly influence voting behaviour. It is therefore important to ask which model of party choice VAAs follow. We establish that VAAs see party choice largely as proximity-based issue congruence, with some elements of the directional and salience models. We then assess how well VAAs follow the proximity model by comparing policy positions extracted from 13 VAAs in seven European countries with established policy measures from expert surveys and party manifestos. Party positions extracted from VAAs show strong convergent validity with left-right and economic positions, but compare less favourably with immigration and environment measures. The voting advice given to users is also inherently limited: VAAs mostly disregard accountability, salience, competence and non-policy factors; they treat policy positions and not outcomes as paramount; and they can be subject to strategic manipulation by political parties. As recommended by their designers, voters should treat these applications as tools and guides rather than as stringent recommendations.

A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

“…Also, the more statements are included on a given dimension, the more voters with a clear position on that dimension get the advice to vote for a party with a similar position on that dimension. This pattern corresponds with findings of Wagner and Ruusuvirta (2012) that increasing the number of statements covering an issue is almost never detrimental. The more politics is 'dimensionalized' for both parties and voters and the more a VAA taps into these dimensions, the more valid the voting advice it produces.…”

“…The plots showed that more statements on the left-right dimension makes VAAs better able to connect voters with parties in a meaningful way (see also Wagner and Ruusuvirta 2012). How many statements are needed is a tricky question, though.…”

“…VAAs differ in the number of statements upon which they calculate their output (Wagner & Ruusuvirta, 2012). However, to select which statements are used, different criteria can be used.…”

“…Most VAAs emulate models of proximity voting (Wagner & Ruusuvirta, 2012). The more statements a voter and party agree upon, the smaller the distance and the higher the score of that party for that voter.…”

“…VAAs do not include valence issues as these do not allow VAAs to distinguish parties. Still, most VAAs are not based only on the logic of proximity voting but also incorporate elements of the saliency model (Wagner & Ruusuvirta, 2012).…”