The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Vote Choice, Issue Congruence, and Polarisation

Against the background of the increasing use of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) we address their impact on vote choice by examining, whether their use leads to more vote switching. Additionally, we also include analyses on VAA’s impact on issue congruence and political polarisation, which both are relevant aspects with regard to well-functioning representative democracies. Our analyses are based on novel data from a large-scale experiment with nearly 4,000 voters participating in a panel-study during a regional election in Switzerland in spring 2022 and detailed information from the candidate-based VAA smartvote.