The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

A new aspect of electoral campaigns in Europe, and increasingly elsewhere as well, has been the proliferation of the online voter informaton tools, widely known in the political science community as Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). By accessing VAAs, users are provided with information about the degree of congruence between their policy preferences and those of different parties or candidates. Although the exact mechanisms have not been rigorously investigated, a series of studies across European countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Hungary have demonstrated a link between the use of VAAs and electoral turnout. The aim of this paper is to further contribute to this growing literature by analyzing previously untapped data from a nationally representative telephone panel survey in Greece. Since the interviews for the two waves of the survey were conducted following the January and September 2015 parliamentary elections in Greece respectively, the data not only allow us to attempt to replicate the findings from previous studies, but also to test intuitions with regards to the estimated effects by taking advantage of the panel structure of the survey. The estimated effects are discussed in the context of the various methods that have been proposed to increase turnout, especially among younger voters.