The Effects of VAA Advice on Voters: Evidence from Experiments in Denmark

VAAs have become widespread, but it remains unclear how much they impact voters and whom they impact. In order to get leverage on this question we use data from two field experiments in Denmark. In each experiment, we implemented a VAA on a major Danish news website and randomized whether the advice came before or after the voters stated their vote intention. The results demonstrate that VAA effects on voters are surprisingly large in the real world, especially in less salient elections and among voters with less political interest. Considering how many users VAAs have in many countries, this suggests that they have become a very important factor in contemporary elections.