Reducing Partisan Animosity with Voting Advice Applications

In this study, we test whether the provision of tailor-made information on issue proximity by a Voting Advice Application (VAA) increases users’ affect toward out-parties. Recent research has demonstrated that policy disagreement largely underlies out-party (dis)affect. At the same time, VAA research has demonstrated that, by matching voters’ policy preferences with political parties, these platforms can contribute to more accurate perceptions of parties’ policy stances. Thus, we test whether VAA usage can contribute to reducing levels of partisan animosity. First, we rely on pooled cross-sectional data from national election studies including questions on VAA-usage. Second, we leverage on a large-scale across-subject experiment on a VAA population, using the EU&I pan-European VAA used by nearly 2 million individuals before the 2024 European Parliament elections. Third, we use an encouragement experiment on a representative sample of the Swiss population. Our findings suggest that VAA usage is associated with an increase in affect for out-parties. Furthermore, the increase in out-party affect is concentrated among the parties that exhibit a closer convergence with individuals’ policy positions.