Voting Advice Applications in Europe

Transcription

VOTING ADVICE APPLICATIONS
IN EUROPE
THE STATE OF THE ART
Edited by
LORELLA CEDRONI & DIEGO GARZIA
Napoli, 2010
Proprietà Letteraria Riservata
©Copyright 2010
CIVIS s.n.c/Scriptaweb – Napoli
È vietata la riproduzione di questo libro o parte di esso con qualsiasi
mezzo tecnico.
Table of Contents
Preface.............................................................................................. 9
Chapter One
The Effects of VAAs on Users’ Voting Behaviour: An
Overview
Diego Garzia.................................................................................... 13
Chapter Two
The Irresistible Rise of Stemwijzer
Jochum de Graaf ............................................................................... 35
Chapter Three
Much Ado About Nothing? Online Voting Advice
Applications in Finland
Outi Ruusuvirta ............................................................................... 47
Chapter Four
The Impact of Voting Indicators: The Case of the German
Wahl-O-Mat
Stefan Marschall, Christian K. Schmidt ............................................ 65
Chapter Five
More than toys? A first assessment of voting advice
applications in Switzerland
Andreas Ladner, Gabriela Felder, Jan Fivaz ................................... 91
Chapter Six
Do the Vote Test: The Belgian Voting Aid Application
Michiel Nuytemans, Stefaan Walgrave, Kris Deschouwer ............... 125
Chapter Seven
Mapping the Political Landscape: A Vote Advice
Application in Portugal
Marina Costa Lobo, Maarten Vink, Marco Lisi ........................... 143
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Chapter Eight
wahlkabine.at: Promoting an Enlightened Understanding
of Politics
Christine Mayer, Martin Wassermair .............................................173
Chapter Nine
cabina-elettorale.it (Provides advice to Italian voters since
2009)
Roberto De Rosa.............................................................................187
Chapter Ten
Are the Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) Telling the
Truth? Measuring VAAs' Quality. Case Study from the
Czech Republic.
Michal Škop ...................................................................................199
Chapter Eleven
The use of Voter Advice Application in Poland –
Glosuje.com.pl
Agata Dziewulska..........................................................................217
Chapter twelve
Voting Advice Applications in Europe: A Comparison
Lorella Cedroni ...............................................................................247
REFERENCES LIST ........................................................................259
Notes on Contributors
Lorella Cedroni is professor of Political Philosophy at the
University of Rome “SAPIENZA” (Italy); PhD in Social and
Political Sciences, EUI (Florence). She was Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh (PA), USA, in
2008. She is Director of the SEC (European Society of Culture) International Summer School, Venice, and coordinator
of the national research on VVA in Italy. Her research focuses on political representation, democracy and political
parties.
Kris Deschouwer is professor of Political Science at the Vrije
Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on political parties
and party systems, with special attention to the role of parties in complex and divided societies.
Roberto De Rosa is assistant professor of Public Policies at
the University of Viterbo (Italy). He obtained his PhD in
Science of Communication and Complex Organizations at
the University of Rome (Lumsa). His research is focused on
social capital and political parties. He collaborated with
cabina-elettorale.it.
Agata Dziewulska is assistant professor in international relations and European studies at the Centre for Europe, University of Warsaw. She holds a PhD in Social and Political
Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence
and specialises in political systems of post-conflict states.
She coordinates the academic part of the VAA Glosuje.com.pl
project in Poland.
Gabriela Felder is political scientist and member of Politools, a political research network owning the Swiss voting
advice application smartvote. She was the project coordinator
of the Swiss contribution to the EU-Profiler, a voting advice
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application set up for the first time for the European Parliamentary Elections in 2009.
Jan Fivaz studied history, political science and economics at
the University of Berne. At the moment he is working on
his PhD on the quality of political representation in Switzerland at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration
(IDHEAP) at the University of Lausanne. He is also a
founding member of Politools – the owner of the Swiss
VAA smartvote.
Diego Garzia is PhD Candidate in Comparative and European Politics at the University of Siena. Previously, he studied at the University of Rome (Sapienza) and Leiden University. He has been editor-in-chief of cabina-elettorale.it and
co-editor of VoteMatch.eu. His research is focused on the
role of personality in orienting political attitudes and behaviour. He is also interested in parties, elections, VAAs, and
their impact on voting behaviour.
Jochum de Graaf is project leader of Stemwijzer at the Instituut Publiek en Politiek (IPP).
Andreas Ladner is professor for political institutions and
Swiss public administration at the autonomous university
institute IDHEAP in Lausanne. His areas of research include political parties, municipalities, institutional change
and e-democracy. He has conducted several major research
projects of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Actually
he leads a research project on the voting assistance application (VAA) smartvote.
Marco Lisi holds a BA in Political Science and International
Relations (University of Florence) and MA in Political Science (ISCTE, Lisbon). He obtained his PhD in Political Science from the University of Florence in 2007. Research interests focus on political parties, electoral behaviour, democratic theory and political communication.
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Marina Costa Lobo obtained her Doctorate from Oxford
University with a thesis researching Prime Ministerial power
in Portugal. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute
of Social Sciences in Portugal, and is also a co-editor of the
Journal South European Society and Politics. Her interests
centre on electoral behaviour and political institutions in
Portugal in a comparative perspective.
Stefan Marschall is professor of political science at the University of Siegen. Before, he worked as senior lecturer in the
social science department of the University of Düsseldorf.
He is a specialist on the German political system and comparative as well as transnational parliamentarism. Since 2003
he is in charge of the Wahl-O-Mat research commissioned by
the Federal Agency of Civic Education.
Christine Mayer holds a degree in history and English language and literature. She works at the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 and is responsible for the project
wahlkabine.at.
Michiel Nuytemans is a researcher at the University of
Antwerp and currently at work for Indigov, a spin-off company of the K.U.Leuven. His research interests are voting
aid applications, media and politics, elections and eParticipation.
Outi Ruusuvirta is PhD candidate in the Department of
Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her doctoral research uses experimental
methods to investigate the effects of online voting advice
application use on citizens’ electoral behaviour in Ireland,
Finland and the United Kingdom.
Christian K. Schmidt is a lecturer of Political Science at the
social science department of the University of Düsseldorf.
His research focuses on political communication, voting
behaviour, political participation and political corruption.
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He consults the Federal Agency for Civic Education in
Germany (bpb).
Michal Skop received Master in Mathematics and PhD in
Demography at Charles University in Prague. He is a coauthor of Czech and Slovak VAAs and watchdog website
KohoVolit.eu. He is interested in scientific approaches to
VAAs and in statistical modelling of roll-call data. He works
as a programmer nowadays.
Maarten P. Vink is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the
Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal and Assistant Professor at the Department of Political
Science of the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. He
holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Leiden (2003). Vink's research interests are European integration, immigration, citizenship and comparative methodology.
Stefaan Walgrave is professor in political science at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). He leads the Media, Movements, and Politics (M²P) research group in Antwerp. His
research interests are media and politics, social movements,
electoral behaviour and campaigns.
Martin Wassermair is a historian and political scientist. He
works at the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 in
Austria, and is responsible for the project wahlkabine.at.
PREFACE
As the rise of the internet has transformed the world of information in democratic societies, so it has changed the patterns of political communication in Western democracies.
With regard to electoral campaigns, the internet has quickly
established itself as an essential medium alongside the traditional media (newspapers, television). Contemporary publics
can choose from a growing number of partisan websites providing detailed information on the behalf of specific parties
and candidates. At the same time, the interactive possibilities
of the internet have generated new opportunities for accessing
non-partisan sources of political information. A major innovation in this respect is represented by the so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs).
VAAs have literally taken Europe by storm in the past decade, with millions of voters turning to these web-based tests
at election time. In essence, VAAs are online databases of parties’ positions on a number of core policy issues. By comparing users’ position on those issues with that of the parties, the
application produces a sort of voting advice – usually in the
form of a rank-ordered list, at the top of which stands the
party closest to the user’s policy preferences. Such applications are aimed primarily at increasing voters’ understanding
of what parties stand for at a very cheap cost (in terms of procurement, analysis, and evaluation) by means of an immediate
and enjoyable approach. In turn, this can increase voters’ interest in political matters, motivate them to discuss about politics, and hopefully gather further information.
More recently, the impressive numbers of users visiting
VAA-websites have led some political scientists to hypothesize an effect of these tools also on voters’ electoral behaviour. Questions about VAAs’ ability to motivate users to turn
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Preface
out and vote (possibly for the party advised by the application) have been repeatedly raised. However, little empirical
evidence has been collected so far – this lack being particularly evident in comparative perspective.
To overcome this gap in the literature, we decided to devote
our efforts to this first systematic investigation of the major
country-based VAAs from all over Europe. The cases included range from established applications such as Dutch
StemWijzer and German Wahl-O-Mat to ‘first attempts’ from
Southern and Eastern Europe, in order to portray in detail the
various stages of development of the VAA-phenomenon
around the continent.
The time-point under analysis is, in each case, the European
election of June 2009. The second-order nature of this electoral
competition – where voters are thought to vote for parties
closer to their preferences and ideological outlook – seems in
fact an ideal context to assess the potential of such applications.
Clearly, the comparability of the empirical findings collected
throughout the volume is limited by the specificities of the national setting in which the various VAA operate, as well as by
the widely different methodology employed (and popularity
enjoyed) by such applications. For this reason, we look forward to the huge amount of data collected by two ambitious
pan-European VAAs developed in occasion of the 2009 EP
election – EU Profiler and VoteMatch Europe 1 – in order to assess if and to what extent the electoral effects of countrybased VAAs are comparable with those exerted by these
Europe-wide experimental applications.
Although EU Profiler [www.euprofiler.eu] as such is not featured in
this volume, the methodology is widely discussed with reference to its
Portuguese spin-off Bússola Eleitoral (see Chapter 7). The same goes for
VoteMatch Europe [www.votematch.eu] which is a licensed version of
Dutch StemWijzer (see Chapters 1 and 2).
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Preface
The modest hope of the present authors is that of having
ignited, through this volume, a fruitful exchange between academic and practitioners on applications that are likely to become an ever more used and appreciated feature of electoral
campaigns in the years to come.
Lorella Cedroni & Diego Garzia
Rome & Siena – June 2010
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CHAPTER ONE
The Effects of VAAs on Users’ Voting Behaviour:
An Overview
DIEGO GARZIA
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) 1 are becoming a widespread feature of electoral campaigns in Europe, thus attracting a growing interest from journalists, commentators,
and – more recently – political scientists. VAAs help users
casting a vote by comparing their policy preferences on major issues with the programmatic stands of political parties
on such issues. The mechanism employed is rather straightforward: the respondents fill in a web-questionnaire with
their opinion on a wide range of policies; after comparing
the user’s profile with that of each party, the application
produces a sort of advice under the form of a rank-ordered
list, at the top of which stands the party closest to the user’s
policy preferences. To get a raw picture of the spread of
VAAs around the continent, Walgrave et al. (2008a) surveyed a large sample of European political scientists: as
they find out, in 2007 there was (at least) one voting advi1 These applications have been defined in several ways: Voting Indicators
(Boogers and Voerman, 2003), Party Profile Websites (Hooghe and Teepe,
2007), Political Internet Consultants (Kleinnijenhius and van Hoof, 2008),
Online Vote Selectors (Ruusuvirta and Rosema, 2009) just to mention
some examples from the most recent literature. However, in this chapter we will refer to them as Voting Advice Applications (Walgrave et al.,
2008) because of the seemingly emerging consensus on such denomination – or, at least, on the “VAAs” acronym (see: Nuytemans et al. in
this volume).
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Diego Garzia
sor running in 15 countries out of the 22 surveyed. The
numbers are impressive: to mention just a few, suffice to
say that in 2006 the Dutch StemWijzer counted some 4.7
million advices given (equal to roughly 40 percent of the
Dutch electorate), while three years later the German WahlO-Mat reached 6.7 million users (12 percent of the eligible
voters in the country). The widespread diffusion (in terms
of countries) and popularity (in terms of users) of these
tools is obviously linked with the rise of internet. On the
one hand, technological developments made easier the
production of VAAs; on the other hand, the pervasive diffusion of the medium rendered them accessible to a huge
number of potential users without serious effort. However,
the internet alone cannot possibly account for VAAs’ success. Also structural political changes going on in Western
publics must be taken into consideration: in particular, the
erosion of cleavage-based voting (Franklin et al., 1992) and
partisan alignments (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000) augmented dramatically the number of floating, undecided
voters (Dalton et al., 2000) and consequently the demand
for guidance (or at least, advice) in the – not anymore simple – act of voting.
1.1. The decline of long-term determinants of voting behaviour
According to classic democratic theorists such as Mill,
Locke, and Tocqueville, the prerequisite for a good democracy is that citizens/voters posses an acceptable level of political abilities (in terms of knowledge, understanding, and
interest in political matters). However, with the rise of survey research in the 1940s it appeared immediately the stunning contrast between the classic image of a supercitizen and
the real nature of contemporary voters (Berelson et al.,
1954; Campbell et al., 1960). Voting behaviour research
Chapter One - The Effects of VAAs on Users’ Voting Behaviour
looked then at the ways in which citizens “manage the
complexities of politics and make reasonable decisions…through the use of political cues and other decisionmaking shortcuts” (Dalton and Wattenberg, 1993: 196).
Early studies focused on two strong providers of political
cues: social groups and partisan affiliations. The former
draws the attention of voters to the party (or parties) that
historically have supported the social group to which the
voter belongs. Hence a voter can base a decision between
competing parties on cues such as the endorsement of labour unions, business associations, religious groups, and so
on. An even more powerful source of political cues is partisanship. While the usefulness of social group cues is limited
to topics directly related to group interests, party identification has broader applications. Parties are in fact central actors of democratic politics, so almost all political phenomena can be evaluated within a partisan framework (Miller,
1976). The social-psychological view holds that party identifications act to filter individuals’ views of the political
world, providing them not only with a means for making
voting decisions, but also with a means for interpreting issues and candidates. For this reason, some have come to
define partisanship as the ‘ultimate cost-saving device’
(Fiorina, 1990).
By the 1970s dramatic changes began to affect Western
societies, and in particular the stable social cleavages on
which they were based. There are several causes for the decline of social classes as such (e.g., embourgoisement of the
working class, growth of the service sector and governmental employment, increased geographic mobility and urbanization); in political terms, the major consequence has been
a sharply reduced ability of social cleavages to structure individual voting choice (Franklin et al., 1992). As it has been
argued, “social cues may still be a potent influence on vot-
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ing behaviour for people who are integrated into traditional
class or religious networks…but today there are far fewer
people who fit within such clearly defined social categories”
(Dalton, 1996a: 331). In the same years, it also became clear
that voters were de-attaching from political parties. Russell
Dalton (1984; 2000) linked this pattern of partisan
dealignment to a process of cognitive mobilization among
Western publics due to social modernization (Inglehart,
1977), and in particular to rising levels of education and the
spread of television as a source of political information. In
the light of this, it could be previewed a decreasing functional need of partisanship (Shively, 1979) inasmuch voters
were increasingly able to orient themselves in the complexities of politics thanks to stronger cognitive skills as well as
less costly information, as provided by the new medium.
The more visible consequences of such process is the
growth of so-called apartisans (e.g., voters not attached to
any particular party, but yet equipped with the necessary
skills to understand politics) that resulted in an increased
aggregate volatility at the macro-level, and a progressive delaying of vote decision’s timing at the micro-level (Dalton et
al., 2000). These changes in the sources of political and
electoral cues led to what some authors named the individualization of politics. This has involved
“a shift away from a style of electoral decision-making
based on social group and/or party cues toward a more individualized and inwardly oriented style of political choice. Instead of depending upon party elites and reference
groups…contemporary publics are more likely to base their
decision on policy preferences, performance judgments, or
candidate images” (Dalton 1996b: 346).
1.2. Candidates, issues and other short-term determinants of voting behaviour
Candidates have come to matter increasingly in vote
choice for different reasons (for a review, see: McAllister,
2007). However, voting on the basis of personality has often being seen as ‘irrational’ (Converse, 1964; Page, 1978),
for the popular cynical view of candidates is that “they are
affectively packaged commodities devised by image makers
who manipulate the public’s perceptions by emphasizing
traits with special appeal to the voters” (Dalton and Wattenberg, 1993: 208). The literature has focused extensively
on what kind of voters are more sensitive to candidates’
personalities. According to Pierce (1993), “[c]andidate traits
need not be related to politics, whereas parties, ideologies,
and issues are inherently political; thus, candidate traits require less sophistication to understand and incorporate into
the voting decision” (24).
As said, however, a growing part of contemporary electorates is basing their vote choice on a rather different aspect, that is, issue preferences (Franklin et al., 1992; Dalton,
1996a). The standard model of rational decision-making
based on issues, as applied to the study of voting behaviour, is the spatial model developed by Anthony Downs
(1957). According to Downs, every policy can be placed on
a left-right continuum. Issue voting basically means that
people’s vote is determined by the proximity/distance on
the continuum between their own position on the issue and
that of the parties. In order to be meaningful, issue voting
requires that:
a) voters have a clear policy preference;
b) parties offer competing proposals over the same policy
(Nie et al., 1979);
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c) voters are able to link their position on the policy to that of
one of the parties (Butler and Stokes, 1969).
Contrary to candidate-driven vote, the key aspect here is
sophistication – especially in terms of knowledge and understanding of political matters. In order to link their policy
preference to that of the parties, voters need not only to
have developed a preference, but also to have gathered a
sufficient amount of information about the parties’ position
on those policies. Unfortunately information is costly. Three
are in particular the costs involved in becoming sufficiently
informed over an issue:
i) procurement: the costs of gathering, selecting, and transmitting data;
ii) analysis: the costs of undertaking a factual analysis of
data;
iii) evaluative: the costs of relating data or factual analysis to
specific goals (Carmines and Huckfeldt, 1996: 245).
Furthermore, things can get way more complicated because of the multi-party nature of many democratic systems
(thus information on each issue should be gathered with respect to every competing party) and from the serious possibility that there is more than one relevant issue to the
voter (Pappi, 1996). If this is the case, then “an issue voter
would vote for the candidate who was closer to him on the
two-dimensional plane defined by the two issues” (Nie et
al., 1979: 159). Admittedly, this may be complicated.
1.3. The Use of VAAs: An Advice for Issue Voters
Here is where VAAs come into the picture. Voting advice
applications help voters in making cheaper the costs involved in getting informed, because:
i) the VAA-makers have already procured all the relevant information with respect to the parties’ positions on major
policy issues;
ii) the application analyzes the information through an
automated algorithm that compares the position of the
voter on such issues with those of the parties, and…
iii) …assists the voter in evaluating the information by providing a ‘vote advice’ – that is, a rank-order list at the
top of which stands the party closer to the voter on the
n-dimensional issue space (Edwards, 1998).
In this way, users can fulfil the requirements of meaningful issue voting simply by having a clear preference over
policy issues. The application will do the rest, linking the
voter’s position on the various policies with that of the parties (Butler and Stokes, 1969).
How does a VAA work 2? There are several underlying assumptions behind VAAs development: namely, that there
In this section we refer to the so-called ‘StemWijzer Method’ (for a
better discussion, see: de Graaf in this volume) as developed by the
Dutch Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek, on the grounds that it has been
the pioneer VAA in Europe (the first release dating 1989) and among
the most successful in terms of users. Furthermore, many European
applications are based on a fundamentally similar methodology (e.g.,
Austrian Wahlkabine, Belgian Doe De Stemtest!, Italian Cabina Elettorale),
while some are licensed versions of StemWijzer itself (e.g., Bulgarian
Glasovoditel, French Mon Vote à Moi, German Wahl-O-Mat). Of course,
some VAAs differ more substantially from StemWijzer: To their innova2
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are substantive programmatic differences between the political parties, that many voters are willing to base their voting decision on an assessment of these differences but they
have difficulties in making sense of these differences (Edwards, 1998). VAAs help voters overcome these difficulties
by lowering the costs related to the procurement, analysis
and evaluation of information, as described below.
Information procurement. The first job of the editors is to select key issues raised in the various parties’ electoral manifestos under the form of specific ‘statements’ (e.g., ‘taxation
should be reduced regardless of the taxpayer’s income’).
Suitable statements must be politically relevant, tackle a
number of diverse issues, and discriminate between parties 3
(Walgrave et al., 2009: 1168). The final list of theses is given
to the recognized members of political parties (usually,
those who drafted the party manifesto), who decide
whether the party agrees, disagrees or is neutral to the given
statements.
Information analysis. The application gets online some
months before the Election Day, as soon as all the parties
have answered to the statements’ list and this has been refined by the editors according to the selection criteria outlined above. The user is provided with a number of policyrelated statements, to each of which (s)he can choose to
agree, disagree, or stay neutral (see Figure 1.1). When all
statements are answered, the voter can also assign an extraweight to those issues (s)he feels of particular importance.
Then the application compares the answers of the user
with those provided by each party, on the basis of the printive features and the reasons underlying their implementation is devoted a discussion in the final section of this chapter.
3 In other words, issues on which all parties agree are ruled out from
the questionnaire. On these grounds valence issues (Stokes, 1963) are
never included in the making of VAAs.
ciple of shortest distance (for a detailed description, see: de
Graaf in this volume).
Figure 1.1 – Example of a VAA statement
Source: <http://www.votematch.eu>
Information evaluation. Eventually, the user is provided with
a vote advice – as said, a rank-order list at the top of which
lies the party placed at the shortest distance to the user 4 (or,
to put it more easily, the party whose answers to the questionnaire are most similar to those provided by the user). In
this way, the VAA helps the user evaluating the informaHence, VAAs favor a proximity model of issue voting (Downs, 1957) rather than a directional one in which voters are assumed not to care so
much about the exact political distance, but rather prefer those ‘on
their side’ (Rabinowitz and MacDonald, 1989).
4
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tion by showing which parties are closer (farther) to his/her
issue preferences (see Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 – Example of a ‘vote advice’
Source: <http://www.cabina-elettorale.it>
What has been said so far relates to the intentions of VAAs
developers; but what about the users? Are they playing the
tool for the same reasons (e.g., gather political information)? A study of political websites’ users in the Netherlands by Boogers and Voerman (2003) demonstrates that
the main reason for visiting a VAA website is exactly to
collect more information on the positions of political parties. Furthermore, it has been showed that the majority
ofVAA users get strengthened in their political knowledge
after having played the test, while one in three declares to
feel more involved in politics (ibid.).
1.4. The impact of VAAs on political participation
VAAs can be thought to affect political participation in at
least three ways: (1) by contributing to a change in individuals’ information-seeking behaviour: that is to say, motivating users to gather further information about politics
and political parties. We will refer to this item as the ‘cognitive dimension’ of participation (see: Marschall and
Schmidt in this volume); (2) by motivating people to turnout, even if they had not intended to do so before playing
the tool. In this case, the supposed VAA-effect would quantitatively affect the ‘behavioural dimension’ of political participation (e.g., to vote or not to vote); (3) finally – yet less
frequently (Ruusuvirta and Rosema, 2009) – by affecting
individuals’ vote intentions: that is, convincing already decided voters to change their political preference. Here, the
VAA would affect the quality of participation (e.g., voting
for party B rather than party A). Let us analyze in turn the
(potential) effect of VAAs on each of these spheres in
more detail.
Cognitive effects. The question here is what kind of difference VAAs make to the information-seeking behaviour of
voters and, consequently, their level of information (Edwards, 1998). Motivating users to gather more information
can be relevant, since the “search for more information can
serve to increase one’s competences in understanding politics by affecting the extent and quality of individuals’ politi-
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cal activities” (Marschall and Schmidt in this volume). Previous research tells us that this is indeed the case: a survey
conducted in 2005 among German VAA users shows that
slightly more than a half of the respondents declare to be
motivated to collect further political information after having performed the test (Marschall, 2005). Of course, cognitive effects would be of little interest to our purposes if we
could not detect any reflection in the actual behaviour of
users/voters. However, previous research has shown that
VAAs can also affect vote choice, in both quantitative
(turnout) and qualitative (vote intention) terms.
Behavioural effects. As a result of long-term patterns of social and partisan dealignment, contemporary electorates
have developed an increasingly instrumental orientation towards politics (Thomassen, 2005). Accordingly, voting has
become something that citizens will only do as long as they
have a real choice, and such instrumental orientation implies that “voters will decide from election to election
whether they will vote or not” (ibid., 255). Consistently with
low-information rationality theories (Popkin, 1991), the probability for such instrumental voters to cast a vote is inversely proportional to the effort required to gather enough
information. Hence, we can hypothesize that the usage of
VAAs, by lowering the cost of information, facilitates vote
decision and thereby increases the chance of voting vis-à-vis
abstention. This hypothesis is supported by previous studies on the impact of political knowledge on turnout, which
show that to higher levels of political information corresponds a decreased likelihood to abstain (Delli Carpini and
Keeter, 1996). Research on the impact of VAAs usage on
turnout further reinforces this conclusion. A study by Mykkänen and Moring (2007) on Finland found that, after controlling for demographic variables, using a vote selector increases the likelihood of voting by 21 per cent for men and
23 per cent for women in the 2003 parliamentary elections.
Lower, yet significant figures, are reported by Marschall
(2005) for Germany (8% of respondents ‘considered’ the
option of voting in the federal election of 2005 thanks to
the test) and Boogers (2004) for the Netherlands (12%
considering voting in the parliamentary election of 2003).
The reasoning above holds for voters whose preference is
weak (when not a real lack of preference) – hence performing the test might have given enough strength to a preexisting preference to get to the polls. But what about users
who faced the test with strong(er) preferences already
shaped in their mind? Based on what we know about cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962), it is likely that a wide majority of these voters will reject a recommendation which does
not conform to previously existing beliefs. This hypothesis
is strongly supported by empirical evidence; yet, the very
same studies show that there is indeed a correspondingly
small but significant proportion of VAAs users who declare
that they will change their vote choice in accordance with the
voting advice received. The proportion of self-declared
‘swing-voters’ among VAAs users seems, according to the
available evidence, quite varied across different national settings: 3 percent in Finland (Mykkänen and Moring, 2007), 6
percent in Germany (Marschall, 2005), and up to ten 10
percent in the Netherlands (Kleinnijenhuis and van Hoof,
2008). Furthermore, one could compellingly ask whether
this reported ‘intention’ to change vote preference is
matched by actual changes in voting behaviour. To this is
devoted a study by Walgrave et al. (2008a) who compare the
results of a survey performed by Belgian users after playing
Doe De Stemtest! [in English: Do the Vote Test, DVT] with a
post-electoral one in which respondents were asked
whether their post-test intention persisted until the polling
day. According to the former, only “one in 10 users said
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that DVT contributed to their doubt and barely one in a
hundred said that DVT made them change their mind”
(ibid.: 59). These figures gets significantly downsized in the
latter survey, which documents that
“on average, only half of the people who said DVT made
them doubt about their vote actually changed preferences…Even among the small group of people saying that
DVT really made them change their mind, one third did not
change their mind at all and remained loyal” (Walgrave et al.,
2008a: 65-66).
If the figures are correct, then it would seem that a substantial proportion (around two thirds) of users who intended to change their vote choice after playing the test did
actually so at the ballot. Combining this figure with the (continuously growing) number of visitors to VAA websites
would give us a tentative – yet quite appealing – measure of
the potential of these tools to affect election outcomes. Let
us take the Dutch case for a small thought experiment:
StemWijzer counted 4.7 million users to its 2006 edition
(that is, 40 percent of the Dutch electorate); after the test,
as said, an abundant 10 percent of surveyed users reported
the intention to change their vote in accordance with the
advice received; assuming that two in three did so at the
ballot, then we would get to roughly 300.000 votes moved by
StemWijzer (!) corresponding to 3 percent of votes casted in
that election. Clearly, it is just a speculation made up by applying a country-based (e.g., Belgian) finding on the figures
relative to a different national setting (e.g., the Netherlands). Much more solid evidence is needed before we can
generalize the effective impact of VAAs beyond the posttest survey respondents. Yet these figures, along with the
rising popularity of these tools throughout Europe, seem to
call the attention of political scientist on a topic that the
discipline has been overlooking, with few exceptions, for
too long.
1.5. Critiques and improvements to the ‘StemWijzer Method’
In the light of their impact on (a growing number of) users, an academic interest has recently arisen with respect to
the consistency and reliability – to put it in a word, the quality – of the voting advice provided by such applications.
The main critiques targeted to what we have called the
‘StemWijzer Method’ deal with four different aspects: a) the
selection of the statements to be included in the test; b) the
different saliency that both voters and parties attach to different issues; c) the way in which it is established the position of each party on the various issues; and d) the dimensionality of the policy space in which voters and parties are
placed. With regard to the first aspect, Walgrave et al.
(2009) demonstrate that the specific selection of statements
to be included in the VAA questionnaire has a considerable
impact on the advice provided to the user. According issue
ownership theories (Budge and Farlie, 1983), it goes without
saying that the inclusion of certain issues may result in an
advantage for those who own them; hence, the need for a
systematic, empirically-oriented process of statement selection (such as the one presented by Nuytemans et al. in this
volume). As to the second aspect, theories on issue salience
(Niemi and Bartels, 1985) have already highlighted that different voters and parties may (and do) consider some issues
more relevant than others. Since its very first version,
StemWijzer provided its users with the possibility to assign
an ‘extra-weight’ to some issues considered particularly
relevant. However, the same possibility was (and is still) not
provided to political parties. Some criticized this feature on
the ground that dichotomous answer levels (e.g., the party
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Diego Garzia
agrees, the party does not agree) can reduce sharply the discriminatory power of the tool (Krouwel and Fiers, 2008).
For this reason, several applications (many of them described in the chapters of this volume) are now facing both
parties and users with questionnaires where the answer can
be placed on a 5-point Likert scale. At third, the method
has been questioned with respect to the authorization process by political parties. StemWijzer’s methodology consists in
fact in giving to political parties the freedom to position
them on each issue without double-checking whether this
position is formally supported by the party manifesto. According to one of the creators of StemWijzer, authorization
by authoritative sources within the party is a sufficient
guarantee of political reliability (Schuszler et al., 2003).
Some contends that this might make the tool vulnerable for
manipulation by party elites, and campaign strategists in
particular (Groot, 2003). Therefore, some VAA makers
have opted for a process of ‘calibration’ based on a hierarchy of data sources, such as party manifestos or transcripts
from parliamentary debates (for a better discussion of this
point, see: Krouwel and Fiers, 2008). As a final point, drawing from the literature on policy space (multi) dimensionality (see: Sartori, 1976), some VAAs (e.g., Dutch Kieskompas,
Portuguese Bússola Eleitoral, Swiss smartvote) have gone beyond the linear notion of distance subsumed in the StemWijzer methodology by placing both parties and voters on a
multidimensional space (for a better discussion, see: Lobo
et al. in this volume). These and other aspects will be thoroughly discussed in the following chapters.
1.6. Outline of the book
Chapter 2 by Jochum de Graaf – one of the inventors –
discusses the origins of the father of all Voting Advice Ap-
plication, Dutch StemWijzer, the educational purposes underlying its development and the reasons of its ‘dazzling
success’. The extensive discussion of the so-called ‘StemWijzer Method’ in particular seems to us a fundamental point
of departure for the reader not particularly familiar with the
way in which VAAs operate.
Following Chapter 3 by Outi Ruusuvirta deals with the
Finnish case. As she shows, if the Netherlands are the place
in which it all began, Finland is the country where it went
online first 5. Moreover, the Finnish online voting application
scene is characterized by the wider number of VAAs available to the voters, as compared to every other European
country. Ruusuvirta’s piece is of particular interest for her
discussion of the determinants of VAAs popularity among
users – which she individuates in the kind of electoral system adopted in the country. A highly proportional system
such as that employed in Finland implies in fact the presence of many parties on the ballot. Furthermore, through
the open-list system voters are not only asked to vote for a
party, but also for one of its candidates. In this candidatecentered context, voters are required (of course assuming
their willingness to base the vote on issue stands) to compare the positions of hundred of candidates – a task easily
accomplishable through the use of VAAs. The rise of
VAAs is also linked to the spread of internet among mass
publics. Accordingly, Ruusuvirta highlights that in Finland
(as everywhere else, as we shall see) VAA usage is fundamentally a ‘generational phenomenon’ – the typical user being young, male and highly educated 6. Finally, she reviews
StemWijzer’s first online version is of 1998, while the first internetbased VAA appeared in Finland as early as 1996.
6 Unfortunately, this identikit depicts the kind of voter less likely to need
guidance in the act of voting (see Ruusuvirta in this volume for a better
discussion of this point).
5
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Diego Garzia
all the available literature on the Finnish case dealing with
VAAs effects on users’ political behaviour.
The impact of VAAs on voting behaviour is at the core
of Chapter 4 by Stefan Marschall and Christian Schmidt. In
their study of an extremely popular German application
(Wahl-O-Mat) the authors distinguish between effects on
the ‘cognitive’ dimension (that is, motivating users to gather
further information about parties and candidates) and effects on the ‘activity’ dimension (such as mobilizing users
to go to the polls) of political behaviour. As they show,
Wahl-O-Mat is capable of affecting both dimensions in significant terms. From a methodological perspective, their
piece is of extreme interest for the discussion of web-surveys
as a cheap and effective (although not widely employed)
way to study voting behaviour at the individual level.
In Chapter 5, Andreas Ladner, Gabriela Felder and Jan
Fivaz discuss the impact on voters’ choice of smartvote, a
VAA developed in the most candidate-centered system of
all Europe, Switzerland. In the Swiss case, single candidates
(rather than parties as a whole) are involved in the makingprocess: the chapter’s added value lies thus in the discussion of the matter also from the politicians’ point of view.
As they demonstrate, smartvote is considered ‘more than a
toy’ by both candidates and voters. Consequently, if VAAs
are to be taken seriously, they move to the crucial question:
to what extent can their providers be held accountable?
Chapter 6 by Michiel Nuytemans, Stefaan Walgrave and
Kris Deschouwer moves its steps in the same path. Being
also the Belgian a case in which VAAs (in particular, Doe De
Stemtest!) do have an impact on vote choice of a – small but
significant – number of users, the authors make a strong
point in favor of the ‘complete methodological transparency’ of VAA-making. In particular, they discuss two key
points related to the quality of the advice provided by such
application: namely, the process of statement selection and
the different saliency attributed by different parties to each
of these statements 7. This chapter provides also an insightful conceptualization of different approaches to VAAmaking. It is the authors’ point of view that VAAs should,
first and foremost, help people vote ‘as informed as possible’. That is to say, VAAs are (or should be) aimed to help
users casting their vote, not to tell them what party they
should vote for.
The same point is shared by Marina Costa Lobo, Maarten
Vink and Marco Lisi. In Chapter 7 they present Bùssola Eleitoral, a multidimensional VAA at work in Portugal since
2009. Contrary to every other VAA presented in this volume in fact, the Bùssola places both parties and voters on a
bi-dimensional policy space. After a thorough discussion of
the main dimensions of political competition in Portugal,
the authors describe in detail all the methodological aspects
of the application. The chapter is especially interesting for
its focus on other quality issues, such as the ‘authorization
process’. Contrary to StemWijzer in fact, the makers of Portuguese VAA place political parties on issues based on an
expert judgment of party manifestos and parliamentary debates’ transcripts. Rather than asking directly to parties,
their position is thus ‘calibrated’ by the makers themselves.
Furthermore, both parties’ and users’ positions are (or at
any rate, can) be arrayed on 5-point Likert scales, in order
to enhance the discriminatory power of the tool.
Chapter 8 by Christine Mayer and Martin Wassermair illustrates the Austrian VAA wahlkabine.at. These authors
underline the educative purpose of such tools, which “cannot, and should not serve as substitutes for independent re7 Differently from StemWijzer in fact, Doe De Stemtest! features an algorithm by which the final voting advice is computed taking into account
the saliency assigned by both parties and voters to the various issues.
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Diego Garzia
flection and responsible decision making”. Following
Chapter 9 by Roberto De Rosa presents some data from
Cabina-Elettorale.it, a pilot study conducted on Italian voters
during the campaign for the European elections of June
2009. These two chapters represent a reciprocal integration
of theoretical and pratical aspects. The Austrian and Italian
applications are in fact linked by a common methodology
and realization, both being based on the IT platform developed by the Austrian Institute for New Culture Technologies.
In Chapter 10, mathematician Michal Skop presents a
comparative assessment of quality of the advice provided
by different kind of VAAs. In his analysis of Czech Republic, he focuses on two applications: iDnes.cz and KohoVolit.eu. The former is based on the well-known ‘StemWijzer Method’, while the latter – developed by the author
himself – relies on what he labels the ‘Roll-Call Method’.
The distinctive feature of this method lies in the statement
selection procedure: questions are based on topics which
have been voted on in parliament; parties’ position on such
topics is thus based on roll-call records from the past legislature. He finds that both kind of VAA have advantages,
but also drawbacks: while ‘prospective VAAs’ such as
StemWijzer tend to rely too much on what parties propose
to do – thus ignoring what they have done so far – roll-call
based VAAs are vulnerable to the opposite critique, being
fundamentally ‘retrospective VAAs’.
Chapter 11 by Agata Dziewulska presents Glosuje.com.pl, a
VAA developed in Poland in the outset of 2009 European
Parliament elections with the aim of increasing turnout in a
country characterized by extremely low levels of electoral
participation. After having identified the major reasons of
nonparticipation (as it appears, one of the crucial arguments lies in the ‘poor understanding’ of the elections by a
substantial majority of Polish voters), she moves to an illustration of how those reasons could be neutralized. In this
context, Glosuje.com.pl is presented as a way to provide citizens with effective political information at a cheap price –
thus highlighting once more the fundamentally educative
purpose of VAAs.
Chapter 12 by Lorella Cedroni draws the conclusions and
outlines avenues for further research in the field.
33
CHAPTER TWO
The Irresistible Rise of Stemwijzer
JOCHUM DE GRAAF
The first StemWijzer was developed in the Netherlands in
1989. The Didactische Handleiding Maatschappijleer (in English:
Didactic Social Study Manual), published by Stichting Burgerschapskunde (SBK: Citizenship Foundation), contained a
simple test with extensive, especially ideological, statements
from political party programs. In that year Paul Lucardie,
an employee of Documentatiecentrum Nederlanse Politieke Partijen (DNPP: Documentation Centre of Dutch Political Parties) came to SBK with the idea of developing a voting aid
tool – in the same sense as he had done in a limited scale in
the city council elections of Groningen. The StemWijzer –
an idea of the present author, then project leader at SBK –
was the co-production of SBK, DNPP and the faculty of
Bestuurskunde (Political Management) at the University of
Twente (UT). The StemWijzer package was a small book
with 60 statements and a diskette. The package was meant
for junior high-school education.
This first version was based on a simple principle,
namely, that all political parties can be placed on one dimension: a left-right scale. If one agreed with a particular
statement, this gave a range from 0 to 50 points, depending
on the party standing for the statement. By dividing the total amount of points with the amount of the statements
agreed upon, the advice was computed and given. Before
the package was advertised in the professional magazine of
social science and social and political education teachers, it
could be ordered through SBK. The book was fairly popu-
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Jochum de Graaf
lar especially within the educational sector. However, only
around 50 copies of diskettes were sold.
Only after that, we started considering the possibility of
using computers, on the basis of the ideas of UT employee
Peter Schuszler. The first, more advanced digital StemWijzer was published at the time of the Tweede Kamer Parliamentary election of 1994. The reach of publicity with the
articles in nation-wide newspapers and interviews on radio
was particularly significant. Despite this tension, the use of
StemWijzer remained limited. In total, some thousand diskettes were sold, partially through SBK (that by then merged
into the Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek; IPP: Institute for
Political Participation), but also via kiosks and bookstores.
In 1998, the StemWijzer for the parliamentary elections was
not only spread out in a large number via diskettes and to
the readers of the daily newspaper Trouw among others; it
was also published on the Internet on the election site of
IPP. 6.500 voters used the first Internet version.
Ever since the beginning, StemWijzer has had mostly an
educational purpose. In the teacher’s manual of 1989, this
purpose was expressed as follows: i) increasing knowledge
of the programmatic differences and similarities between
political parties; and ii) providing aid for making choice for
a political party. The aim has always been to show the political differences between parties, on the basis of the assumption that voters should know these differences and be
able to compare them with their own viewpoint and political position. This is the educational purpose of StemWijzer,
which is expressed by the name itself, which means “voting
wiser”. From the research we have conducted throughout
the years, we have found that StemWijzers are not only
played, but also used as the starting point for discussion in
family or friends, at classes, workplaces, in cafés or on the
streets.
Chapter Two - The Irresistible Rise of Stemwijzer
2.1. Realization
The election manifestos of the involved political parties
are at the basis of every version of StemWijzer. The first
job of the editors is to select the issues (in the form of simple statements) from different election programs. During
the selection, attention is paid to the dispersion of the
themes that are in the programs, whether positions are controversial enough (at least one party against and one party
pro), and whether the positive and negative statements are
appropriately in balance. The first selection results in a list
of some hundred theses. This selection is then discussed in
a wider circle, where attention is paid to actuality, relevance,
clarity, and so on. New statements can also be added during
this time. In the end, a gross list of roughly fifty theses is
left, that are given to the recognized members of political
parties. They decide whether the party agrees, disagrees or
is neutral to the given fifty theses. Often, this time is also
used by the involved personnel to comment on the given
formulation of the theses or the lack of relevant issues.
This critique is taken into account in the final version as
much as possible. Then the final shifting is done. Theses
that do not have at least one party agreeing or disagreeing
are eliminated. Next to that, theses where quite a number
of parties have chosen for the neutral position are also
likely to be skipped. The statements should be well spread
over different themes, and all parties should remain different enough from each other in their positions. If a combination of theses has too few difference points, then different theses will be chosen. The goal is to finish with roughly
25 to 30 theses.
It is clear to everyone that bringing the text of hundreds
of pages of party programs down to approximately thirty
questions will always remain controversial. Every person
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with a moderate interest in politics can easily think of a
number of subjects that are not dealt with in StemWijzer.
Yet, we believe that the final choice of statements represents a real summary of political issues that will play an essential role in the parliamentary period ahead, and thus is
good to have knowledge of the positions of political parties
on such issues. We have a number of reasons to believe
this:
- All theses and election themes come from the election
programs of participating political parties. Every party
represents a certain number of election subjects.
- We look for theses that are relevant and characteristic of
the involved political parties, for example by looking at
what each party states in the introduction of their party
programs.
- In the selection process, the issues that are treated in the
election campaign are looked at, without easily going
with ‘the illusion of the day’. Political programs presented during election, after all, go for four years – a
parliamentary term.
Furthermore, in the selection process political parties
themselves are ultimately involved, when they answer the
gross list of theses. The positions of political parties to
these theses give party profiles to which the voters will be
compared with.
According to certain critiques, there is discrepancy between what party says to stand for, and what they actually
mean. In particular, the parties on the far side of left and
right spectrum are supposed to use this tactics. Other parties might be dominantly profiling on one subject (e.g., single-issue parties). Another tactic might be that of choosing
answers which they think people would like to hear.
Every judgment of any independent political forum always carries the danger of arbitrary judgment paired with
the ever-lasting discussion about political parties’ positions.
To avoid this, we have chosen a simple solution, which is
to have the parties answer these questions themselves. The
responsibility is explicitly expressed in the colophon (Frequently Asked Question) part of the website. Because of
this, StemWijzer also acts as a test of the consistency of
party programs themselves. Due to the long experience of
making StemWijzers over the years, we can in some cases
point out the inconsistencies of the standpoints of the parties over time. In 1994, there were still some arbitrary answers from the political parties, not being answered seriously. In the following years, the authorization process of
the political parties came to be taken more seriously. It
happened several times that the political parties changed
their positions after careful consideration.
StemWijzer became an authority, and political parties
started to recognize its importance. In the past, only the
campaign leader or the drafter(s) of the party manifesto
were answering the StemWijzer questions. Nowadays, it is
not rare that the list of questions goes through the different
levels of the party. For example, in CDA, they let members
of multiple levels take tests, involving: all members of the
campaign teams, party leaders and candidate members for
European Parliament, the member of the external commission of the party – up to 40 members in total. The authorization by the parties leads to constructive comments, in
some cases to extensive discussions within the parties. Because StemWijzer is placed in a public space on the Internet, we also receive hundreds of emails, most of which are
positive, but also people asking why certain party takes certain standpoints. The editors of the StemWijzer forward
these questions to the respective parties.
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2.2. Method of calculation
As of 1998, the StemWijzer Method is as follows: a user is
provided with the theses, to which (s)he can choose to
agree, disagree, be neutral or have no opinion 1. In the case of no
opinion, the thesis is not taken into account when calculating
the voting advice. When all the theses are answered, the
user can assign extra weights to certain theses. Then the
computer compares different party profiles to that of the
user, on the basis of the principle of shortest distance (see
Table 2.1). If the user agrees with a thesis (+) and the party
disagrees (-), the difference is maximum (2 points). If a user
has the same opinion as the party (agree, disagree or neutral), then there is no difference (0 point). If a user or a
party takes a neutral standpoint, the score is 1.
Table 2.1 – Scoring on the basis of ‘closest distance’
Voter:
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Parties:
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
0
1
2
1
0
1
2
1
0
With 30 theses, the maximum distance according to
above formula is 60 points, and the smallest distance is 0.
The maximum distance can become larger if the user selects one or more theses to be weighted more heavily (if the
subject is important to them). The points for these theses
are then doubled and thus get to a maximum of 4 points
Since 2005 the answer options are as follows: agree, disagree or no opinion.
1
per thesis. The party with the lowest score is at the top of
the recommendation list provided at the end of the test.
One of the most asked question about StemWijzer is
whether the application gives a correct or trustworthy advice. Of course, this leads to the question: what is a correct
advice? Here, it helps to have the educational aim of StemWijzer in perspective. StemWijzers are, above all, meant to
make the voters literally wiser. What StemWijzers do is no
more and no less than submitting a number of political
statements to the user, and then compare his opinions with
those of the political parties. Apart from a voting advice,
StemWijzer challenges users to think about most important
actual political questions. They get to know how parties
think about these theses and through this reach new
knowledge and insights. From recent researches, it seems
that users do pick up the idea of StemWijzer quite well.
They do not pay the most attention to the voting advice,
but are encouraged to think. Especially the ‘surprising effect’ is appreciated; recommendation that is different from
expectation is a good motive for comparison of party
standpoints and for further discussion with family and
friends. One more finding from the research is that voting
tests such as StemWijzer will play a large role in future election campaigns, because it offers a good counter-balance
against the ‘media-democracy’ trend of recent years (see, in
this respect, the various chapters in this volume).
2.3. The reasons of a dazzling success
The StemWijzer has grown – in one-year period between
2002 to 2003 – into the most used Internet application during election time. From 50 sold brochures in 1989 to 6.500
given advice in 1998, then to more than 2 million in successive parliamentary elections in 2002 and 2003, up to 4.7
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million in 2006: dazzling success. Yet there are a number of
good explanations for this achievement. First, the ‘success’
of an election: an exciting election campaign and thrilling
political debates are necessary conditions. Something has to
be at stake for an election to receive attention. For the
voter, it has to be clear that there is something to choose
for. The election campaigns of both 2002 and 2003 did
meet all these conditions for lively democracy. The irresistible rise of Pim Fortuyn and his LPF also had a huge effect on StemWijzer.
In March 2002, Fortuyn did not yet have a party program
available. StemWijzer 2002 was launched on March 10th
without the participation of LPF. 10 days later, the book De
Puinhopen van Paars (The Mess of the Parliament) which was
supposedly functioning as an election program of LPF was
published, and immediately after this LPF approved the
gross list of statements. In a very short time a new StemWijzer, now featuring LPF, was brought online. This not only
provided new publicity, but also did increase the number of
visitors very much. Most part of voters wanted to know
what LPF was standing for, and what their own positions
were in respect to the controversial issues. The extremely
lively, but also turbulent campaign of 2002, increased the
turn-up rate by 5%. When the first cabinet of primeminister Balkenende fell after four months and a new election was required, then again it was a very lively campaign.
Once more, StemWijzer was indispensable part of it. In
May, the number of 2 million recommendations (that is,
completed tests) was reached in 11 weeks. StemWijzer for
parliament election of 2003 came online on December 3rd
and broke the record of 2 million within 7 weeks with addition of about 200.000. As always, the number of visitors increases as the election campaign progresses. On the elec-
tion day of January 2002, over 200,000 recommendations
were given out.
Another major explanation is the enormous flight of the
Internet at the beginning of the century, both in the number of users, as well as its general usage. In 1998, roughly 1
million people in the Netherlands had access to the Internet. In years 2002 and 2003, this number was roughly tenfold of that.
StemWijzer is not only attractive as an Internet website,
but also as an independent voting advice tool. This was the
case when StemWijzer took part in the TV program Studio
2 during the campaign of year 2002, where guests received
their voting advice and from there went into debates. In the
campaign of 2003, similar arrangements were made with
the radio program Stand.nl and with Freek de Jong for his
broadcasted TV theatre-show De Stemming (The Voting/The Mood). In the 2006 campaign there was, exactly
one week before Election Day, a 90 munites tv-show
StemWijzer TV, with debates on the theses by party leaders
and the audience at home participating by answering the
statements by SMS.
The success of StemWijzer also comes in large part from
its design, the presentation, the user-friendliness and
handiness of the program. Most voting tests are characterized by a multiple-choice set-up, simple layout, long question lists on scroll-down Internet site, clicking on radio buttons to give the answers. With StemWijzer, the theses are
presented one by one in a tight layout, where the answering
categories are presented with clickable buttons. In this way,
the visitors can digest the theses well and take considered
positions.
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2.4. The future of StemWijzer
From the beginning of StemWijzer, there have been discussions about the set-up of the program. Each time, the
reflected point is if the answering categories are sufficient,
the question of whether the five-scale-answer of between
fully agree and fully disagree would have to be introduced,
or whether for example a pop-up window with explanation
of difficult terms should be given, if the political parties
should be given the opportunity to comment further on
their standpoints with a link to their party program, or if
questions with multiple-answer could also be asked. These
suggestions of improvement should never be shut out from
the possibility of implementation; however, we chose so far
to stick to the simplest possible set-up. The propositions
are presented one by one, the vote advice can be compared
with on the level of a party and on the level of propositions. From all our researches, it appears that the users appreciate this compact set-up, next to the curiosity for the
voting advice and the surprise-effect of StemWijzer, which
are all are highly valued.
In recent years the StemWijzer has improved itself to an
even more elaborated educational tool. Throughout the
years the calculation method has been profoundly discussed. The method mentioned in Table 2.1, on the ‘closest
distance’ (or ‘city-block method’) has been used in different
variations. Especially the valuation of the neutral or ‘middle’ position, was a few times changed; the so-called
Cohen’s kappa coefficient was used, the statistical measure
of inter-coder agreement for qualitative (categorical) items.
In principle this is a more robust measure since it takes into
account the agreement occurring by chance. But this working quite well for scientific research did not mean that it
should work for a simple educational test like StemWijzer.
When used in the campaign for provincial elections in
2007, this method proved to be disadvantageous for parties
(since we were using the method for a selection of party
answers that was chosen by us), thus we decided to get
back to the most simple calculation method. Nowadays the
result (e.g., voting advice) of the StemWijzer is calculated
by simply counting the agreements between the answers of
the users and those of the parties. Each answer that has
been given an extra weight does get an extra point.
An even more important improvement for StemWijzer is
the addition of the motivations of parties to the answers
given. As from the parliamentary elections in 2006, when
the all-time users record was obtained, the user could click
on the party answer and consult in a pop-up screen the arguments from the party to take side pro or contra. In all recent versions of StemWijzer (European elections 2009,
municipal elections of 2010, where some sixty different
StemWijzers for all major cities in the Netherlands have
been developed) this functionality is available on every thesis. When thinking about an answer, the user can, by clicking on a party logo, check all deliberations of the parties. By
strengthening the educational value of the tool, the user can
vote even wiser.
In the upcoming election campaigns in the Netherlands,
we will also continue the experiments in having users to
participate in the selection of issues and the formulation of
theses. In some municipalities StemWijzer fans could
change and add theses with the Wikipedia-method. In the
near future a forum application will be added, as well as
discussion groups from social networks like Facebook or
Hyves. In this way StemWijzer will be ready for the next
developments in the lively world of internet and politics.
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In the end of year 2003, StemWijzer was awarded the Machiavelli
prize, the yearly distinction award for the performance in the field of
government communication. The jury report speaks of a ‘beacon in the
sea’, the ‘ocean stream’ of information in election times: “In a time of
the ongoing mediatizing, dramatization and personalization of politics
in general and election issues, StemWijzer offers a program-contentbased politics to counter-balance the above trends”.
CHAPTER THREE
Much Ado About Nothing?
Online Voting Advice Applications in Finland
OUTI RUUSUVIRTA
The first online voting advice application (VAA) in
Europe was developed in Finland in 1996 for the country’s
first European Parliament Election. Erkki Vihtonen, a project manager at the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company
Yleisradio (YLE), had been inspired by a simple online
game on the website of the US news corporation CNN and
decided to develop a tool to inform Finnish voters about
the European Parliament Election candidates and help
them choose a suitable candidate (Vihtonen, 2007). From
this humble beginning with only 8.000 users has grown a
phenomenon that is now a permanent fixture in the Finnish electoral landscape.
This chapter will review the short history of VAAs in
Finland. We begin by tracing the development of Finnish
VAAs before turning to the examination of the factors that
make these applications so popular in the country. We will
then analyse profiles of Finnish VAA users. Finally, we will
conclude with a review of research conducted on the effects of online voting advice applications on their users.
3.1. Development of Online Voting Advice Applications in Finland
Many features distinguish the Finnish online voting application scene from the rest of Europe. One such feature is
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the large number of VAAs available to voters. As noted
above, the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company developed the first VAA in 1996 and the largest daily newspaper,
Helsingin Sanomat (HS) followed this example by building
its own application for the 1999 European Parliament election. The first Helsingin Sanomat VAA attracted 15.000 users (Haukio and Suojanen, 2004: 129). YLE and HS applications were still the only two VAAs available in the 2000
Presidential election, where they were used by 150.000 and
65.000 citizens respectively (ibid.). The following year, 11
different VAAs were developed for the local election (Suojanen, 2007: 17). The first two pioneering applications were
joined by VAAs from the biggest commercial TV channel,
MTV3, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities and a large number of regional newspapers.
The real breakthrough for voting advice applications
came in the 2003 Parliamentary Election. This time 12 different VAAs offered their help to voters. Previously, the
audiences reached by the most popular VAAs had ranged
between 100.000 and 200.000 users, depending on an election, but in the 2003 General Election the two largest
VAAs reached approximately 530.000 and 410.000 users
respectively (Kauppinen, 2007: 127; YLE Viestintä, 2003).
Considering that the size of the electorate in these elections
is approximately 4.2 million, it can be argued that VAAs
truly established themselves as a part of election campaigns
that year. Since 2003, voting advice applications continued
to grow both in number and in popularity. The 2004 EU
Election and the 2006 Presidential Election saw many new
VAA providers offering their VAAs to the electorate,
among them political parties building their own applications to market their candidates to voters and interest organisations offering applications concentrating on specific
themes.
Chapter Three - Much Ado About Nothing? Online VAAs in Finland
In the 2007 Parliamentary Election voters could choose
from 20 different VAAs. The most popular applications attracted over one million users (Borg, 2008: 95). Several
VAAs targeting special audiences, such as young voters,
those interested in development issues or health care, also
appeared in this election. Up until this point, Finnish VAAs
had more or less followed the basic format first used in
1996 by presenting users with a multiple-choice questionnaire to compare their preferences with candidates’ views.
In 2007, a group of young mathematicians developed a
completely new type of VAA. This Naama application
compared user’s picture to those of the candidates’ and
matched them based on the degree of facial similarity 1. The
number of applications went through the roof in the 2008
local election as many local and regional newspapers and
local authorities provided VAAs concentrating on local
themes and issues to supplement the more general national
applications. Today, online applications helping voters to
choose have also spread beyond national elections and are
used in a wide variety of contests from university student
council elections to parish council elections.
Simply looking at VAA user figures does not tell us the
whole story about the popularity of these tools among the
electorate at large. As Mykkänen and his colleagues point
out in connection with the 2007 General Election, 63 per
cent of those who used VAAs took advantage of more than
one application (Mykkänen et al., 2007). Other studies have
suggested that this has also been the case in other elections
(Bengtsson and Grönlund, 2005: 247; Paloheimo, 2007:
1
In the 2007 elections 167.000 users compared their images to candidates. The creators of Naama have continued to develop facial similarity VAAs, not only for Finnish elections but also for the 2008 US Presidential
elections.
The
applications
are
available
at
<http://www.naama.fi/index.php?lang=en>.
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61). We must therefore consider national election study
data for a more accurate picture. Voting advice applications
were first included as an independent variable in the 2003
Finnish Election Study. Before that, the study asked respondents only about their Internet use in general. Of all
respondents in the 2003 study, only 12 per cent had used at
least one VAA in the run up to the election. When we consider respondents who actually voted, the figure grows to
16 per cent. Of those who both voted and used the Internet during the campaign, 40 per cent had used at least one
VAA (Paloheimo, 2007: 59). On the whole, these figures
appear rather low. However, as will be shown below, VAA
use is conditioned by other factors, especially the age of the
voter, and in certain cohorts use of these tools is much
more common than in the electorate as a whole. For instance, of the 18-24 year olds, 46 per cent reported to have
used at least one VAA during the 2003 campaign (ibid., 60).
As with the number of VAAs themselves, the share of the
electorate using them also grew in the 2007 General Election. Of all respondents, 41 per cent had used voting advice
applications and in the two youngest cohorts, nearly 59 per
cent used VAAs (Mykkänen, 2009, personal communication). It would then appear that by the 2007 Election,
online voting advice applications had reached a large
enough proportion of the electorate to become a significant
factor in electoral analysis.
While such a large number of applications is arguably
good for the democratic process as voters have several
VAAs to choose from, Finnish election candidates are beginning to complain about VAA fatigue. While very few
would dare not to respond to the three most widely used
applications along with perhaps one regional and a special
interest VAA, many are expressing their frustration about
the time and effort taken in filling out numerous voting ad-
vice applications during the already busy campaign period
(Vähämaa, 2007). Nevertheless, it appears that online voting applications have become a permanent feature of Finnish election campaigns. Applications rate as the most
popular online information source for voters (Strandberg,
2009: 77) and VAAs form the most popular electionspecific content on the websites of media houses providing
them. As one VAA provider put it: “It would be hard to
imagine an election campaign without VAAs” 2. Despite
questions raised in blogs, other online forums and coffee
tables about validity and reliability of VAAs, their unknown
matching algorithms, question selection and response alternatives, the open-list proportional representation (PR) system used in Finnish elections along with other factors make
VAAs an easy way for voters to find comparable information on election candidates (Borg, 2008: 95). Let us now
consider these factors more closely.
3.2. Why Are Online Voting Advice Applications Popular in
Finland?
Finnish parliamentary, European Parliament, and local
elections all employ the open-list PR system in multimember districts 3. This means that voters do not only vote
2
O. Ainola - Interviewed on 23 February 2009, Helsinki.
Finnish President is chosen directly by popular vote using a tworound majority system. Typically, the number of candidates is low
(eight in 2006) and the number of top candidates with a realistic chance
of being elected is even lower. Leading presidential candidates are also
well-known political figures and therefore VAAs in these elections have
concentrated somewhat less on political issues and more on the personality and non-political views of the candidates. It is possibly for these
reasons that VAAs are used less in Presidential elections than in parliamentary and local elections. For instance in the 2006 election, only a
3
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for a party but also have to select a candidate from a party’s
list to vote for. Candidates are then ranked on the party
ticket according to the individual votes they receive. This
leads to a candidate-centred election dynamic. While such
an electoral system gives a large degree of choice to voters,
it also makes the selection process harder for them; instead
of choosing from a handful of parties, voters have to
choose from hundreds of candidates. Even accepting that
no voter will give equal consideration to all the candidates,
a choice can still be bewildering and information costs very
high (cf. Downs, 1957). Voters therefore use shortcuts to
help them decide how to vote. Traditionally, the electorate
relied on long-term cues such as party identification
(Campbell et al., 1960) and social class for electoral cues
(Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). As is well-known, the importance of these factors for electoral choice has declined in
most advanced post-industrial democracies in the past 40
years (Franklin et al., 1992). According to the 2003 Finnish
Election Study, the share of those feeling close to a political
party had declined to 47 per cent of the electorate
(Grönlund et al., 2005: 100).
However, in the Finnish electoral system partisan or class
alignment could only ever have been expected to narrow
down the pool of potential candidates a voter would consider. Even the strongest of partisans must select an individual candidate to vote for. When asked for the criteria
used to select a specific candidate, a large majority (82 per
cent) refer to candidate’s views on general political and
election issues 4 (Bengtsson and Grönlund, 2005: 244-5).
quarter of voters had used at least one VAA during the election campaign (Nieminen, 2006).
4
Other selection criteria included the party represented by the candidate (74 per cent), candidate’s previous experience of politics (56 per
cent), his or her educational background (37 per cent), gender (33 per
This figure may overestimate the real influence of issue
considerations, given social desirability voters may feel is
attached to giving such an answer. Nevertheless, it does
suggest that issues play a part in voters’ candidate selection
in Finland and amassing detailed information on potential
candidates even on a few key issues would require enormous amount of effort from even the most politically sophisticated voters. Thus, the candidate-centred election dynamic combined with voter dealignment amounts to a
situation where more and more voters are genuinely making a choice at election time and online voting advice applications, which easily allow comparison of individuals’ preferences with those of the candidates, can be very useful for
voters. Indeed, in a nationally representative survey of both
VAA users and non-users, Mykkänen et al. found 73 per
cent of VAA users agreeing that the applications were a
good way to learn about candidates’ views and 28 per cent
agreed that VAAs made selecting a suitable candidate easier. On the other hand, 20 per cent of VAA users had used
a voting advice application to help rule out a candidate they
had considered voting for (Mykkänen et al., 2007).
Related to the electoral system, another feature of the
Finnish political landscape that can be used to explain the
emergence and the success of online voting advice applications is the relatively high number of electorally relevant
political parties. The Finnish party system is the most fragmented in Western Europe. The mean number of effective
parties between 1945 and 1999 was 5.1 (Mattila and
Raunio, 2004: 269). The three largest parties, the National
Coalition Party, the Centre Party and the Social Democratic
Party, each command approximately 20 per cent of the
cent), appearance and style (32 per cent), how well-known the candidate was (32 per cent) and his or her age (28 per cent) (Bengtsson and
Grönlund, 2005: 245).
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vote in parliamentary elections. In additions to the big
three, five smaller parties also regularly win seats in the
Finnish Parliament, Eduskunta. On the left of the political
spectrum, the Left Alliance and the Green League challenge the Social Democrats, whereas on the centre-right,
the Christian Democratic Party, the Swedish People’s Party
and the populist True Finns compete for voters’ affections
with the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party.
Thus, Finnish voters on both sides of the political spectrum have several parties to choose from. The large number of parties combined with the candidate-centred electoral system described above leads to a situation where for
instance, voters in the Uusimaa electoral district could
choose from 340 candidates competing in the 2007 General
Election. It is no surprise then that online voting advice
applications have become so popular in Finland.
As we noted in the first section of this chapter, media
companies have developed a majority of Finnish online
voting advice applications. The way in which these newspapers and TV channels have promoted their VAAs both
in the online world but especially in their traditional media
format should also be taken into account when explaining
the popularity of VAAs in Finland. Naturally, voting advice
applications have been given plenty of visibility on news
providers’ websites and links to VAAs are widely available.
Newspapers also print advertisements in their paper versions advertising the applications. What the Finnish mediabased VAA providers have become especially skilled at is
their use of data from voting advice applications. Journalists take advantage of the candidate data deposited in VAAs
and use it as a source of news stories for their traditional
media format (Pitkänen, 2009: 122). Both newspapers and
TV news regularly run stories comparing candidates’ views
and preferences on key election issues and investigating
party cohesion by aggregating candidate responses. These
stories, it could be argued, attract even more voters to use
VAAs and appeal perhaps especially to those voters who
would not otherwise use these applications.
Finally, we could hardly explain the popularity of online
voting advice applications in Finland without reference to
the widespread use of the Internet. Being a web-based tool,
VAAs cannot be used without access to the Internet. In the
spring of 2009, 78 per cent of Finnish households had
Internet access and 82 per cent of 16-74 year old Finns reported to have used the Internet in the last three months. A
large majority of Internet user, 82 per cent, go online every
day or almost every day. As could be expected, the usage is
slightly skewed towards younger people; nearly 100 per
cent of under-34 year olds use the Internet. We see a small
drop in Internet usage in the age group 55-64 (just under 70
per cent) and a bigger drop in the oldest cohort of 65-74
year olds (33 per cent) (Tilastokeskus, 2009).
3.3. Who Uses Online Voting Advice Applications in Finland?
Strandberg (2009) analysed the 2007 Election Study data
to find out which factors best explain Finnish voters’ VAA
use. Predictably, the young, the politically active and those
interested in politics are most likely to use online voting
advice applications (Strandberg, 2009: 80).
In the light of what is known about the relationship between age and the strength of political preferences (e.g.
Converse, 1969) and the Internet user figures presented
above, it is hardly surprising that the most eager VAA users
are the young. The Finnish National Election Study shows
that in the 2003 Parliamentary Election nearly a half of voters below the age of 35 had used at least one VAA during
the election campaign. The share of VAA users among
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those who had voted declines the older the voters get. In
the age group 35 to 44, 34 per cent had used at least one
VAA, whereas 15 per cent of 45 to 54 year olds and 10 per
cent of 55 to 64 year olds had done the same. Only five per
cent of over 65 year olds had used VAAs in that election
(Bengtsson and Grönlund, 2005: 246-7). The questions
used in the 2007 Election Study are not fully comparable to
those used in the 2003 Study but we can nevertheless see
that VAA use had increased in all age groups. While those
under the age of 35 are still the most frequent VAA users,
the older cohorts have caught up with the younger ones.
Only 24 per cent of under 35 year old voters say that they
have never used VAAs. In the 35 to 49 age group, 47.6
percent report never to have used a VAA whereas 53 per
cent of voters over the age of 50 had not done this either 5
(Mykkänen, 2009, personal communication). It would seem
that VAA use is a generational rather than age-related phenomenon. The younger cohorts with low partisan identification use VAAs when they first become eligible to vote
and continue to use these applications as they get older
(Moring and Lindfors, 2005).
Although data from the 2003 Election Study and research
conducted after the 2004 EU election suggest that socioeconomic factors are significant in predicting VAA use
(Bengtsson and Grönlund, 2005: 247-50; Moring and Lindfors, 2005: 7), voter’s level of education and household income were not found to be significant explanatory factors
for VAA use in the 2007 study (Strandberg, 2009: 78-81).
The difference may be explained by the rapid growth in the
5
A similar age-related pattern in VAA use is also found in local and
European Parliament elections. For instance in the 2004 European
elections, 57 per cent of 25 to 34 year olds used at least one VAA and
the 18-24 cohort was the second most avid VAA user group (Moring
and Lindfors, 2005).
share of population with access to the Internet. Internet access is now common with households from all socioeconomic groups and even those who cannot go online at
home can and do access the Net at work, school and public
places such as libraries. These findings suggest that there is
no significant digital divide between the wealthy and educated on one hand and the poor and uneducated on the
other as far as VAA use is concerned. Instead, a divide
emerges between those already interested and active in politics and those who do not find politics interesting and engaging (Strandberg, 2009). This raises important questions
about the potential of online voting advice applications to
increase turnout and to help those voters with the least politically relevant information to make more informed electoral choices.
3.4. Effects of Online Voting Advice Application Use on Turnout and
Vote Choice
Establishing a causal relationship between VAA use and
voter mobilisation in one hand and VAA use and vote
choice on the other would require an experimental design.
However, only one such study has been conducted thus far
(Ruusuvirta, 2010). The existing research on VAA effects
relies on voter survey data and thus voters’ subjective selfevaluations. Such evaluations can be flawed for many reasons. For instance, it may be difficult for a voter to evaluate
the extent to which each possible factor affected her decision to vote and her vote choice. VAA use can also have a
subconscious or an indirect effect on voters and the share
of those who explicitly identify VAAs as the deciding factor
is likely to be rather small. Similarly, for reasons of social
desirability, a voter may feel embarrassed to admit that an
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online tool has affected her vote choice and thus deny its
effect when asked in a survey.
With these limitations in mind, let us now consider the
effects of VAA use on citizens’ electoral mobilisation and
vote choices. We could expect VAAs to mobilise citizens to
vote by providing them with succinctly presented, personalised information on candidates and parties running in any
given election (cf. Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996). On the
other hand VAAs could be expected to affect voters’ electoral choices by offering a choice for undecided voters,
strengthening existing preferences of those who have already decided by confirming the ‘correctness’ of their
choice or by convincing decided voters to change their
preference (for a longer theoretical discussion on VAA effects, see: Ruusuvirta and Rosema, 2009).
Mykkänen and Moring (2007) analysed VAA effects on
turnout in the 2003 Parliamentary and the 2004 European
Parliament elections. Using probability analysis, they find
that VAAs can significantly boost the likelihood of voting
among those of lower socio-economic status (SES) but
make hardly any difference for voters from higher socioeconomic groups. The probability to vote in the 2003 Parliamentary Election for men with low SES increases by 21
percentage points from 56 per cent to 77 per cent after using an online voting advice application. The change for
women from lower socio-economic backgrounds is equally
impressive. The probability to vote increases by 23 percentage points, from 53 per cent to 76 per cent. The mobilising
effect for both men and women from higher socioeconomic backgrounds is only 1 percentage point, from
98% to 99% (Mykkänen and Moring, 2007: 23). VAAs also
had a mobilising effect on both men and women from
lower socio-economic classes in the 2004 EU election. The
probability to vote increased by 17 percentage points for
men (from 34 per cent to 51 per cent) and by 16 points for
women (from 29 per cent to 45 per cent). As with the 2003
General Election, VAAs did not significantly boost the
probability that men or women of higher socio-economic
status would vote in the 2004 European election. Both
sexes received only a 2 percentage point boost, with their
likelihood of voting increasing from 96 per cent to 98 per
cent (ibid.). Mykkänen and Moring do not offer an explanation for the lack of a booster effect among the higher
socio-economic classes but “it can be speculated that voters
with higher SES were more interested in the election, knew
more about the parties, candidates and election issues and
were better able to use this information to make their
choice than their less well-off counterparts even before using advice sites. Consequently vote selector use does not
provide additional mobilising incentives for them” (Ruusuvirta and Rosema, 2009: 8). We could also have expected to
find a bigger mobilisation boost in the European Parliament election than in the national parliamentary election as
EU elections have a lower profile and therefore voters may
have more to learn from VAAs in those elections. Mykkänen and Moring (2007) explain this with reference to
high over-reporting of voting in EU elections. They also
argue that “voters in [Finnish] EU elections are predominantly sympathetic to the union… and more likely to vote
anyway”, even without VAAs (ibid., 20).
A less direct and more uncertain measure of the mobilising effect of VAAs is to ask citizens whether online voting
advice applications make them interested in politics and
elections. The obvious problem is that we do not know
whether the increased interest translates to voting. Nevertheless, a poll conducted after the 2007 General Election
found that 36 per cent of VAA users agreed that these web
applications made them interested in politics and elections
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(Mykkänen et al., 2007). This figure may sound rather low
but, as discussed above, we must bear in mind that the majority of VAA users are already interested in politics and
elections and therefore it would be more surprising if the
figure was indeed higher.
When we consider VAA effects on vote choice, we find
that of those who had used at least one VAA during the
2003 General Election campaign, 30 per cent reported that
VAA recommendations had affected their candidate choice
a lot or quite a lot. This means that only seven per cent of
all voters admit that VAAs had had an impact on their candidate choice (Bengtsson and Grönlund, 2005: 246-50). A
data available for the 2007 Election is not fully comparable
with the 2003 Election Study but the results point to the
same direction. Thirty-four per cent of voting advice application users agreed that VAAs had affected their candidate
choice. This translates to 19 per cent of the entire electorate agreeing that VAAs impacted on their candidate choice.
A surprisingly high 15 per cent of VAA users even admitted that they had no favourite candidate and simply voted
for a candidate suggested by a VAA (Mykkänen et al.,
2007). However, as we have noted above, voters’ subjective
estimates of VAA effects are likely to underestimate the
real impact these applications have on their users’ electoral
choices. The effect is also a matter of interpretation. Finnish VAAs typically list all the suitable candidates in the order from the most suitable to the least suitable. Some might
only say that a VAA affected their vote choice if they end
up voting for the candidate whom the application suggested as the most suitable whereas others might say the
same if the candidate they vote for appears somewhere at
the top of the recommendation list.
Another way of evaluating the effects of VAA use on
vote choice is to look at the share of voters who identify
VAAs as an important information source for their electoral decision-making. In the 2003 Election Study, only 17
per cent of all respondents said that they had found a lot or
quite a lot of electorally significant information in VAAs.
As such, VAAs rank below most other traditional information sources, such as newspapers, news and current affairs
programmes on TV, election advertising and family members. However, when we consider only those respondents
who had used VAAs, the figure increases to 65 per cent
(Paloheimo, 2007: 65-6 & 71-2). This suggests that those
who actually use VAAs do find them an important source
of information. The significance of VAAs as an information source does not appear to have changed by the 2007
General Election. A Gallup Kanava Study conducted by
TSN Gallup found that across the whole electorate, 17 per
cent of respondents said that VAAs were very or quite important for their electoral decisions (Strandberg, 2009: 82).
However, in the 2007 Election, those who had used online
voting advice applications rank them as the most important
source of electorally relevant information, even above the
traditionally important newspaper and TV coverage of current affairs 6 (Mykkänen et al., 2007). As we would expect,
the youngest cohort finds VAAs most important for their
decision-making. Fifty-five percent of 18-24 year olds say
that VAAs were very or quite important information source
for their vote choice. A third of 25 to 34 year olds and
nearly a quarter of 35 to 44 year olds also feel that they had
received a lot or quite a lot support for their electoral decision from VAAs. Above the age of 45 the importance of
6
This was also the case in the 2004 local elections; voters in all age
groups identified VAAs as the most important information source
(Vähämaa, 2008). This, however, is not surprising, given the secondorder nature of local elections and the low-information setting in which
they take place.
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VAAs in supporting electoral decision-making declines to
single digit figures (Strandberg, 2009: 82).
Above we have discussed what could be termed direct
VAA effects on citizens’ electoral behaviour. In other
words, we have considered how using online voting advice
applications affect the mobilisation and vote choice of the
person using the VAA. However, several studies both in
Finland and elsewhere in Europe have found that VAA use
makes those using them discuss the results with their
friends and acquaintances. For instance, Mykkänen and his
colleagues find that 42 per cent of VAA users had discussed their VAA recommendations with others (Mykkänen et al., 2007). Marschall (2005) finds similar results in
Germany. Given, for instance Huckfeldt and Sprague’s
(1994) findings about the power of social communication,
it is not far-fetched to speculate that these discussions may
prompt some non-voters to use VAAs which in turn may
bring them to the polls. Current data does not allow us to
test this hypothesis but future VAA studies could include
components to study this intriguing proposition.
3.5. Future of Online Voting Advice Applications in Finland
Political scientists have been divided in their views on the
potential of the Internet to mobilise and inform electorates.
Even the first Finnish book on online voting advice applications (Suojanen and Talponen, 2007) had as its title a
word play, which could be interpreted either as ‘The Powerless VAA’ or ‘The Unruly VAA’. Nevertheless, in this
chapter we have seen that, at least under certain circumstances, online voting advice applications are not just fun
games without any political consequence but can encourage
certain types of citizens to vote. Approximately a third of
VAA users also say that using these applications has af-
fected their vote choice. We might expect a share of those
whose electoral decisions are affected by online voting advice applications to increase in the future. The young people who over the past decade have been socialised into
electoral politics by VAAs can be expected to continue using these applications and their relative proportion in the
electorate increases year by year. In other words, the VAA
generation will gradually replace the oldest cohorts who are
the most partisan and the least likely to use online tools.
Online voting advice applications may or may not come
to replace newspapers and the television as the main channel through which the electorate becomes informed about
politics. In any case, we should bear in mind that the information citizens receive from these different sources is
different. Unlike newspapers, television, radio and advertising, VAAs provide voters with specific, personalised and
easily comparable information about issues and candidates’
and parties’ views on them. This information can potentially have different effects on those receiving it than the
traditional mass media coverage and advertising. However,
the old challenge of bringing politics to those who are not
interested in it still remains. As this chapter has shown yet
again, those who would benefit the most from the information in online voting advice applications are the least likely
to seek it.
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CHAPTER FOUR
The Impact of Voting Indicators: The Case of the
German Wahl-O-Mat 1
STEFAN MARSCHALL, CHRISTIAN K. SCHMIDT
More than seven years ago, several weeks before the elections to the 15th Deutscher Bundestag (the German parliament), the “Wahl-O-Mat” was launched for the first time.
Back then, in 2002 only a few people expected that this
would be the birth of one of the most successful tools in
the field of online communication in Germany. Since its
first use the tool has been deployed at every federal and
European election as well as at many elections on the subnational level.
The Wahl-O-Mat has become one of the most popular
online tools in the field of civic education. The European
Wahl-O-Mat which went online a few weeks before the
elections to the European Parliament in June 2009 was
used about 1.5 million times. The latest national version of
the Wahl-O-Mat deployed at the Bundestag election in September 2009 was played even 6.7 million times.
The Wahl-O-Mat is a non-party service, hosted by an institution that by definition is guided by a ‘supra-party’ mission: the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency
for Civic Education). The BPB is a unique institution, not
found in other European countries.
1
This chapter is a revised and updated version of a paper published
2008 in David Farrell and Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (eds.), Non-Party Actors
in Electoral Politics. The Role of Interest Groups and Independent Citizens in
Contemporary Election Campaigns, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
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Stefan Marschall - Christian K. Schmidt
Attached to the Ministry of the Interior, the BPB is a
governmental organization, but it operates differently than
other government agencies. Its work is supervised by a
group of parliamentarians that reflects the plurality of the
German Bundestag. Its mission is to foster Germany’s democratic culture, to inform about the topics and procedures of the political process and to mobilize political participation 2.
Given the BPB’s mission, the Wahl-O-Mat as one of the
most prominent tools produced by the Federal Agency is
confronted with a range of questions: What kind of effects
does the Wahl-O-Mat have on those using it? Does it have
an impact on the extent and quality of political participation
in Germany?
Answers to these questions will provide insights into
whether voting indicators have the capacity to mobilize
people for example to go to the election booths. If tools
such as the Wahl-O-Mat could indeed contribute to voters’
mobilization, this would make a strong case for promoting
the establishment of new voting indicators, as a decline in
the election turnout has to be observed in many systems
and on different levels.
Take, for example, the German case: an overall decline of
voter turnout in Germany over the course of the last
twenty years has stimulated an intensive discussion about
effective ways to motivate citizens to take advantage of
their right to vote 3. Whereas electoral turnout at the federal
level still tends to be relatively high (at least compared with
other European countries or the United States), the corre2
For details compare the ordinance of the institution, in:
<http://www.bpb.de/die_bpb/The_Federal_Agency_for_Civic_Educ
ation.html>; accessed 10/4/2006.
3
See: Falter and Schoen, 2005; Rattinger et al., 2006; Ohr et al., 2009;
Lewis-Beck, 2008.
Chapter Four - The Impact of Voting Indicators: The Case of Wahl-O-Mat
sponding proportions at the sub-national level (Länder) appear to be in continuous decline (Kersting, 2004; Fritz
2007). This gives rise to concerns about a weakening of the
democratic culture in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Can the Wahl-O-Mat help reversing this trend?
4.1. How does the Wahl-O-Mat function?
Given that the impacts of the Wahl-O-Mat can hardly be
understood without knowing about how it operates, we
must first outline its principal features. The Wahl-O-Mat is
the German adaptation of the Stemwijzer. It basically works
like its Dutch counterpart, although it has some new and
unique features. Similar tools have been implemented in
other countries, like Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy,
and Switzerland (Walgrave et al., 2008a; Ruusuvirta and
Rosema, 2009). However, in quite a few respects the WahlO-Mat is different from its sister applications in other
countries.
The tool confronts the Internet users with 30 to 40
propositions, such as “The German military should leave
Afghanistan immediately” or “A nationwide minimum
wage should be introduced”. The propositions, or so-called
“theses”, are the product of a group of first or second time
voters, all under the age of 27 – the so-called “Wahl-O-Mat
editorial staff”. For each Wahl-O-Mat a new editorial staff
is established. Based on the party platforms provided at the
time of the first staff meeting, the participants attempt to
locate issues in the election campaign that might be controversial among the parties. Journalists and political scientists
advise them during this task.
The propositions the editorial staff looks for must meet
several criteria: above all, they should address relevant
questions in citizens’ lives; additionally, the parties should
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have different points of view in respect of the topics chosen; and they should be easy to understand. Reducing the
complexity of political discussions and policy processes
into a single easily understandable proposition to which users and parties can only express complete agreement or disagreement is one of the most substantial steps for making
this tool work.
At a certain point of the preparatory process, parties are
asked to position themselves around approximately 80 theses chosen by the Wahl-O-Mat editorial staff and meeting
the criteria mentioned above. The staff selects 30 to 40
propositions based on the parties’ responses. Statistical calculations guide the final choice by ensuring that the selected theses are able to distinguish appropriately between
the parties taking part in the Wahl-O-Mat.
As mentioned above, when the tool is finally deployed,
the parties have already positioned themselves with respect
to the 30 to 40 propositions. All party lists which have been
admitted to the elections are invited to take part in the tool.
At the most recent federal election, 29 of the 32 parties
which were admitted answered to the theses.
Responding to the theses is exactly what the Internet users can do once the Wahl-O-Mat is online: by clicking one
of three buttons (“I agree”, “I disagree” or “neutral”) they
take a stand on the propositions, or alternatively can skip
those they have no position on. Having voted on all items
of the list, users can mark propositions they consider personally important to them, giving them a special weight in
the final calculation.
At the end of the session, the Wahl-O-Mat processes the
results. It displays the distance between the single user and
the parties in the tool by showing the best fit (e.g., the party
closest to the user’s position). Additionally, it calculates the
extent of agreement between the user and all remaining
parties by displaying the summed distances. The Wahl-OMat computes the gap between the user’s and the party’s
position using the “city block” method 4.
Furthermore, Wahl-O-Mat users can take a closer look at
the relationship between the positions of the parties and
their own points of view displayed for each proposition.
And the onliners have the possibility to look at the explanations the parties provide to explain their positions in respect to the different topics.
Working this way, the Wahl-O-Mat has become an outstandingly popular online tool. What could be the reasons
for this success? For one, certainly its entertaining property:
about 90 percent of participants in the Wahl-O-Mat surveys
contend that it was fun using the tool (see Figure 4.1). The
moment of surprise that occurs when the tool calculates
the results is attractive. A second reason might be its seeming simplicity: the tool is easy to use and its basic mode of
operation is easy to understand. Most users are already familiar with casting votes on the Internet, as online voting
has become a very popular Web application. However, behind the seemingly simple concept of the Wahl-O-Mat
there are very complex and quite costly organizational routines. In particular, the making of the propositions takes
place in a highly standardized frame, and is a complicated
process that starts several months before the tool is finally
launched.
4
For detailed information on the city-block method (“Manhattan distance” or “L1-distance”) basing on Minkowski distance, see: Bortz
(2005: 570); Backhaus et al. (2008: 404-5). Out of a methodological
perspective, other methods might seem more suitable (Klein, 2006).
But a model based on distances provides a higher degree of transparency to those using the tool.
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4.2. The impact on the users – data analysis
As said before, millions of people have played the WahlO-Mat, making it very popular. However, the exact number
of users is difficult to gauge as it is possible and very probable that people play the Wahl-O-Mat several times, even
though a cookie is applied to guarantee that only one session is counted. Accurately, one can only say that the number of user sessions reached – for example for the European
Wahl-O-Mat in 2009 – one and a half million (i.e., about
2.3 percent of the electorate), and on average ranged between two to three percent of the electorate at the state
level.
But beyond the mere quantitative perspective: what do
we know about the impact of the tool on the people who
used it? In the wake of the Wahl-O-Mat application in
2002, a face-to-face survey asked a representative sample
questions regarding the Wahl-O-Mat. However, the findings did not yield profound data on impacts which could
clearly be linked to the use of the Wahl-O-Mat. In close
cooperation with a research group at the University of
Düsseldorf until 2008 and since 2008 with a research group
at the University of Siegen, the BPB has commissioned additional survey research particularly focusing on the effects
of the Wahl-O-Mat on political behaviour.
4.3. The data base: the Wahl-O-Mat online surveys
Since the Wahl-O-Mat’s application before the 2003 Bavarian elections the research group has made a continuous
effort to collect data on the way voters use and are affected
by the Wahl-O-Mat (see Table 4.1). The data were generated to learn more about those using the tool and to help to
improve it. Furthermore, the findings produce evidence to
respond to speculations regarding the power of the WahlO-Mat to change the voting decision of the users.
Table 4.1 – Overview of Wahl-O-Mat online surveys
Election
Bavaria
Saxony
European Parliament
Schleswig-Holstein
North Rhine-West.
German Bundestag
Baden-Württemberg
Rhineland-Palatinate
Saxony-Anhalt
Berlin
Bremen
Lower Saxony
Hamburg
European Parliament
German Bundestag
Survey period
Sep. 1 – 18, 2003
Sep. 8 – 19, 2004
May 19 – June 13, 2004
Jan. 12 – Feb. 20, 2005
Apr. 19 – May 22, 2005
Sep. 2 – 18, 2005
Feb. 15 – Mar. 26, 2006
Feb. 16 – Mar. 26, 2006
Feb. 24 – Mar. 26, 2006
Aug. 23 – Sep. 17, 2006
Apr. 24 – May 13, 2007
Jan. 7 – 27, 2008
Feb. 2 – 24, 2008
May 19 – June 7, 2009
Sep. 4 – 27, 2009
Completed
interviews
3,847
3,556
12,214
4,315
7,248
14,455
2,990
1,832
1,038
2,662
1,708
2,104
932
10,563
45,613
Source: Wahl-O-Mat Research Group, University of Siegen
For the analysis in this chapter, we draw on data from an
online survey carried out before the 2009 European election. At some points in our argument we will integrate corresponding data stemming from other online Wahl-O-Matsurveys at national and sub-national elections or before the
European elections in 2004. The questionnaire instrument
has been rather stable over time which allows for comparative analyses.
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72
First, some remarks on our method: online surveys have
become a very popular (as well as comparably cheap) way
to collect data. After facing similar difficulties as mail and
phone surveys after they were applied for the first time,
online surveys have been established as a common method
of collecting data 5. However, from a strict methodological
perspective, Internet-based surveys are rather contested
(see for example: Maurer and Jandura 2009; Schnell et al.,
2008: 377-86; Taddicken, 2007; Zerback et al., 2009). The
main objection addresses the problem of the representativeness of the sample. There is no guarantee that a sample
drawn by online surveying generates data which can be
generalized beyond the group of persons that were interviewed. Moreover, there is little control over who is really
filling out the questionnaire, due to the anonymity of online
communication.
However, for our research there were some profound
reasons to use web-based surveys: the questionnaire is directed at individuals who should definitively have played
the Wahl-O-Mat. The best way to reliably recruit people
who can evaluate their experiences with the Wahl-O-Mat is
to get hold of them online right after they have played the
tool. In terms of representativeness, we were not interested
in creating a sample representative of the German electorate. Nor were we looking for a sample that adequately reflects the composition of the online community. The
members of the target population we were interested in
were only those who have used the tool. Thus, we had to
generate a sample representative of the people using the
Wahl-O-Mat. For this purpose, the best choice was the
5
Schonlau et al. (2001: iii); for further information on methodology and
types of online surveys, see: Couper (2000); Welker et al. (2005).
method of online surveying being directly connected to the
Wahl-O-Mat.
Technically, we recruited the sample we will be referring
to in this paper (“European Parliament 2009”) by asking
users directly after their Wahl-O-Mat sessions whether they
would be willing to fill in an online questionnaire; in the
moment the Internet users were about to leave the WahlO-Mat-site, a window popped up inviting them to help to
improve the tool by taking part in a survey (“on exit”).
The recruitment of the sample was based on random
procedure. In order to solve the problem of increasingly
popular pop-up blockers within the last years we used a so
called “layer pop-up” procedure. The layer pop-up window
did not open after every session to reduce the probability
that people who (used) the tool several times would be
asked to participate more than once. Every tenth person
using the Wahl-O-Mat on one of the BPB-servers (leaving
out other servers of, for example, media partners) was
asked to take part in the survey 6. Cookies ensured that users who had already been confronted with the invitation
were not invited to take part again.
Altogether, 73.742 individuals were invited to fill in the
questionnaire (see Table 4.2). The response rate ranged
about 14.3 percent. In the end, we drew on 10,563 completed questionnaires. Although the response rate of webbased surveys is difficult to assess 7, compared to other sur-
6
The generation of the sample is based on the Nth Visitor Methodology, a technique developed by U.S. marketing researchers in order to
prevent self-selection bias (Pfleiderer, 2003: 385-7).
7
Theobald (2003: 203) and Schonlau et al. (2001: 81ff.) provide an
overview on difficulties of rating different response rates.
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veys of this type the quota seems to be absolutely sufficient 8.
Table 4.2 – Basic information on the 2009
European Parliament election Wahl-O-Mat survey
Survey period
Invited to participate
Completed interviews/participants
Response rate
Participants entitled to vote
May 19 to June 7, 2009
73,742
10,563
14.3 %
9,966
Still, the level of representativeness of the sample for the
population of Wahl-O-Mat users is difficult to assess. Although we had a huge number of completed questionnaires, we were not sufficiently confident because – as it is
well known – an increased sample size does not automatically equate to increased representativeness. The same goes
for relatively high response rates: although they definitely
help to provide for representativeness, they cannot give
certainty.
However, other aspects made us confident that our results have descriptive and possibly power for those using
the Wahl-O-Mat. First, we compared the survey’s distributions on some variables with other data to check for representativeness. As mentioned above, we did not expect our
sample to be completely representative for the population
in Germany. Still, in some respects we assumed a significant correspondence (e.g., between the territorial distribu8
Findings of El-Menouar and Blasius (2005: 79) and Theobald (2003:
207-8) are very helpful in order to assess response rates of different
types of surveys.
tion of the sample on the one hand and of the population
on the other), for there is no strong plausibility for a territorially skewed distribution of the Wahl-O-Mat-population.
This indeed was roughly confirmed (see Table 4.3).
Table 4.3 – Territorial distribution of survey sample and population
State / Bundesland
Baden-Württemberg
Bavaria
Berlin
Brandenburg
Bremen
Hamburg
Hesse
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Lower Saxony
North Rhine-Westphalia
Rhineland-Palatinate
Saarland
Saxony
Saxony-Anhalt
Schleswig-Holstein
Thuringia
Population Interviewed
13.1 %
15.3 %
4.2 %
3.1 %
0.8 %
2.2 %
7.4 %
2.0 %
9.7 %
21.9 %
4.9 %
1.2 %
5.1 %
2.9 %
3.5 %
2.8 %
11.2 %
12.2 %
8.0 %
2.8 %
1.5 %
2.7 %
5.6 %
1.1 %
9.1 %
30.9 %
3.5 %
1.1 %
4.1 %
1.6 %
2.7 %
2.0 %
Average absolute deviation: 1.8 percentage points
Sources: <http://www.statistik-portal.de/StatistikPortal/en/en_jb01_jahrtab1.asp>, accessed 11/15/2009;
Web survey Wahl-O-Mat EP elections 2009, n=10,563
Second, the gender distribution served as a point of control. We identified a high correspondence between the gen-
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der distribution within the survey sample and the gender
distribution in the German Internet population referring to
the results of a representative survey conducted by AGOF
(Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Forschung) 2009. About 51% of interviewees were male, which corresponds approximately to
the proportion of males within the German online community.
Third, we gained confidence in the representativeness of
our sample and the reliability of the method by comparing
the results of the 2009 survey with the findings in surveys
we had previously conducted on the Wahl-O-Mat. Indeed,
some response patterns have been extremely stable over
the time. For example, users agreed with the item “It was
fun playing the Wahl-O-Mat” about 90 percent of the time
in all surveys so far (see Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1 – Respondents declaring that
“it was fun playing the Wahl-O-Mat” (in percent)
Besides the points mentioned above, we additionally
checked for further consistencies within the data (i.e., type
of Internet access, response time, etc.). Although an error
probability remains difficult to assess, all indicators have
encouraged us to assume that our sample’s data provide
valid information about our target population, i.e., those
using the Wahl-O-Mat.
4.4. The Wahl-O-Mat population – findings
What do we know about those playing the Wahl-O-Mat?
What does a typical Wahl-O-Mat-user look like? First, the
Wahl-O-Mat community is rather young (see Table 4.4).
About 48 percent are younger than 30 years. Evidently, this
distribution does not correspond with the demographic
characteristics of the German society: those under 30 years
in the German population account for approximately 20
percent. This finding is unsurprising, considering that the
age distribution within the online population does not
match the age distribution of the society at all. However,
the Wahl-O-Mat-demographics do not perfectly match the
distribution among the online community, either. The users
of the Wahl-O-Mat are on average younger than the average Internet user. Within the online population, only about
31 percent are younger than 30 years. Strongly underrepresented in the Wahl-O-Mat community is the segment of
the so-called “silver surfers”, people of 60 years and older:
about six percent in the Wahl-O-Mat population as opposed to about 11 percent in the German online population.
Second, those using the Wahl-O-Mat have a rather high
formal educational background: three quarters of our sample consist of persons with baccalaureate/A-Level or an
academic degree. Heavily underrepresented are people with
a basic formal education only. They constitute the smallest
segment in the Wahl-O-Mat community.
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Table 4.4 – Age groups, aged 14 and above (in percent)
Age (in years)
<20 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 59<
Wahl-O-Mat Users
Online population
General population
12.7
11.5
7.8
34.7
19.4
13.5
20.2
19.3
14.4
16.6
23.3
19.3
10.0
15.1
15.5
5.9
11.4
29.4
Sources: Web survey European Parliaments elections 2009 (n=10,563),
Wahl-O-Mat Research Group, University of Siegen;
AGOF: Internet Facts, Berichtsband zu Internet facts 2009-II,
<http://www.agof.de/berichtsbandif2009ii.download.848e0b18fb27fa
58bbe 4541db0354a5c.pdf>; accessed 9/30/2009.
We can also read from the data reported in Figure 4.2
that, on average, Internet users have a higher formal educational background than the German population (AGOF
2009: 7; Gerhards et al., 2009, Schmitt-Beck et al., 2005). Interestingly, Wahl-O-Mat users have attained an even better
formal education than the average online population. This
might tie in with another typical feature of the Wahl-O-Mat
population, the extent of political interest and activities.
For our third basic finding is that Wahl-O-Mat users are
highly interested in politics and are more politically active
than the population on average. More than three quarters
of those interviewed considered themselves politically interested. About 60 percent claimed to frequently discuss
political questions. Those organized in parties are overrepresented in the sample: in Germany, no more than about
two percent of citizens are registered members of parties,
whereas in the Wahl-O-Mat community 5.6 percent disclosed that they were members of a political party. Only a
small percentage of respondents contended that they will
not go to the ballot boxes although they are by law entitled
to vote. About 90 percent of the Wahl-O-Mat population
planned to go voting, whereas in fact only 43.3 percent of
the German electorate took advantage of their right to vote
in the European elections of 2009.
Figure 4.2 – Formal education (in percent)
Sources: Web survey Wahl-O-Mat EP elections 2009 (n=10,563),
Wahl-O-Mat Research Group, University of Siegen;
AGOF Internet facts 2009-II
There is a further dimension of political interest and
commitment of the Wahl-O-Mat users that distinguishes
them from the overall population. At one point in the questionnaire, interviewees could indicate whether they had a
clear party preference. About 85 percent (see Figure 4.3)
contended that they indeed had a party identification,
whereas in the German population the group of undecided
voters has been growing continuously. Only a small
amount, approximately 10 percent, of those interviewed
might reconsider their vote due to the Wahl-O-Mat, showing that the party preferences of Wahl-O-Mat users are indeed comparably robust.
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To sum it up: the typical user of the Wahl-O-Mat is
young, highly educated, politically interested, and actively
participating in politics.
Figure 4.3 - Extent of political interest and participation
of Wahl-O-Mat users (in percent)
Source: Web survey Wahl-O-Mat European Parliament elections 2009
(n=10,563; n= 9,966 for “plan to go voting”)
Wahl-O-Mat Research Group, University of Siegen
4.5. Mobilizing impacts of the Wahl-O-Mat
Having learned more about the people using the Wahl-OMat, we now turn to the mobilizing effects the tool has on
users. Several items in the questionnaire directly addressed
aspects of political mobilization.
By asking about the implications on political participation, we analyzed whether there is a connection between
online communication and offline participation. At the outset, playing the tool itself is a form of political participation:
the users take positions and even vote on relevant political
questions, leaving data traces on the Internet. Yet, besides
mere online activities, we are interested in the mobilizing
power of the tool, which goes beyond the virtual realm, becoming manifest within the “real” world, that is, in the
world of offline participation.
We directed our research on offline forms of involvement (e.g., discussing politics with others, searching for further information, and voting). The concept of mobilization
on which we based our analysis is rather broad. Mobilization in this sense is not only the capacity of parties to rally
their members. Our understanding of the concept includes
categories like activation and knowledge gain (Schmitt-Beck
and Farrell, 2002: 13).
Firstly, we asked the users whether playing the tool stimulates them to talk about the result with others (friends and
family). Here, we tried to establish whether playing the
Wahl-O-Mat contributes to a communicative and social
dimension of political action. Furthermore, this form of
political participation might have a multiplying effect: by
talking about the tool, the elections and politics in general
might emerge as a topic of day-to-day discussion, constituting a “two step flow” of communication (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955). However, we did not ask exactly how and in
which context the users talked about the Wahl-O-Mat (e.g.
whether they were going to deliberate the political questions raised by the application, or whether they would talk
about the tool itself).
Secondly, the users of the Wahl-O-Mat were asked if
playing the tool motivated them to gather further information about the election and the parties taking part in it.
With this item, we were looking at how the tool contributed to a change in the information seeking behaviour, addressing a “cognitive dimension” of participation. The
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search for more information can serve to increase one’s
competences in understanding politics by affecting the extent and quality of individuals’ political activities.
Thirdly, the users were asked whether playing the tool has
mobilized them to go to the polls – the “activity dimension”. As mentioned at the beginning, the decrease in voter
turnout was (one) central impulse for the BPB to launch
the tool. Therefore, the question whether the Wahl-O-Mat
encourages people to vote has received a lot of attention.
With this item, we looked for a specific and isolated WahlO-Mat effect by asking whether the Wahl-O-Mat has motivated people to go to the polls, even if they had not intended to do so before playing the tool.
All these items comprise as much an ex post as an ex ante
perspective. They are ex post in asking users directly after
their Wahl-O-Mat-session about the effects playing the tool
could have. The ex ante perspective refers to the users being
asked to anticipate the mobilizing effects. However, at this
point of time this is just a subjective prediction. We do not
know for sure whether those saying that the Wahl-O-Mat
has motivated them to collect further political information
were really going to do so. We cannot take it for granted
that the users who claimed to vote or to talk with friends
and family about the Wahl-O-Mat results were in fact doing
so. The tendency to answer questions like those referred to
above as potentially socially desirable can produce biases
(Schnell et al., 2008: 355-6). Moreover, people could also be
incapable of reliably predicting their own future behaviour,
due to intervening factors and changing circumstances that
they cannot take into account when confronted with the
questions.
To ask the respondents at a second point of time whether
the Wahl-O-Mat did indeed have the mobilizing effects
they had assumed it would have (e.g., right after polling
day), would increase validity. However, the design chosen
for the survey does not allow for this kind of ex-post control and/or panel analysis. At this stage we must be content
with the data provided, keeping in mind that we are not
looking at de facto mobilization effects, but at subjectively
predicted ones.
Let us turn to the results of the surveys. First we will look
at the univariate distribution. Then we will refer to some
cross tabulations qualifying some of the results.
Figure 4.4 – Mobilization (in percent)
n = 9,966
persons entitled
to vote
Source: Web survey Wahl-O-Mat EP elections 2009 (n = 10,563),
The first striking finding is a huge variation between the
different items of mobilization (see Figure 4.4). Nearly 70
percent of the sample users contended that they were going
to talk about the tool with others; almost 60 percent said
that they had been stimulated by the Wahl-O-Mat to seek
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additional political information, whereas only about 11 percent were motivated to go to the ballot boxes. It is necessary to take a closer look at these findings.
Talking with others about the results of the Wahl-O-Mat
must be considered a rather low scale form of participation.
It is not very surprising that those users who usually engage
in political discussions discussed the Wahl-O-Mat and its
results (74.8 percent, see Table 4.5). But out of those who
do not discuss politics frequently 62.5 percent (i.e., almost
two thirds), were motivated to talk about the tool, too. The
social and communicative effect was not restricted to the
“talking people”.
Table 4.5 – “I will probably talk about the result with friends and family” (%)
“I discuss on political issues frequently”
Yes
Yes
No
Don’t know
No
DK
Total
74.8
62.5
63.8
16.0
25.4
16.3
9.2
12.1
19.9
Cramer’s V = 0.108, p < 0.001
69.9
19.0
11.1
Source: Web survey European Parliament elections 2009 (n = 10,563),
Almost 60 percent claimed that the Wahl-O-Mat had
stimulated them to collect further political information. Of
course, there is a high association between political interest
and the motivation to get more information on politics.
Many of those using the Wahl-O-Mat expressed their political interest already when they played the Wahl-O-Mat in
order to collect information about the parties and their positions. 59.6 percent said that this had been the dominant
motivation for them to go to the Wahl-O-Mat site. Regarding only the users who said the most important reason to
use the Wahl-O-Mat was to get more information on the
political positions of the parties, the value of the item “motivated me to collect further political information” increases
to 76.7 percent. In comparison: just 48.3 percent of the
“only curious” sought political information because of
playing the Wahl-O-Mat.
Taking a closer look at the data, we seem to identify one
variable being of explanatory power for this dimension of
mobilization: gender. In Table 4.6, we have displayed the
distribution controlling for gender in our sample on the
item: “The Wahl-O-Mat has motivated me to collect further political information”. We see a small but significant
gap between the two groups: whereas only 54.9 percent of
the male respondents were motivated to seek further information on politics, 64.5 percent of female users were
moved to inform themselves further.
Table 4.6 – “The Wahl-O-Mat has motivated me to collect further
political information” (in percent)
Gender
Male
Yes
No
Don’t know
Female
54.9
64.5
29.6
21.3
15.5
14.2
Cramer’s V = 0.104, p < 0.001
Total
59.6
25.5
14.9
Source: Web survey Wahl-O-Mat EP elections 2009 (n = 10,563),
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Yet the differences in the Wahl-O-Mat’s mobilization
power between male and female users are closely linked to
the finding that generally more male participants in the
sample viewed themselves as politically interested than female participants (86.2 as to 66.4 percent). Women seem to
consider themselves being in a subjectively defined need
for more political information.
The number of those users whom the Wahl-O-Mat motivates to vote is small simply because the third item focused
on those who had not intended to vote before they started
playing the Wahl-O-Mat. This item is a combination of two
variables: (1) Did you plan to vote before you played the
Wahl-O-Mat, (2) Does the Wahl-O-Mat make you vote? As
mentioned above, the typical Wahl-O-Mat user is politically
highly interested. Thus, the section of the sample that was
open for this form of mobilization was rather small. Indeed, of those who considered themselves not to be politically interested, almost 20 percent mentioned this special
mobilizing effect (see Table 4.7).
Table 4.7 – “Actually I did not want to vote.
The Wahl-O-Mat has motivated me to go voting” (in percent)
Interested in Politics
Yes
Yes
No
Don’t know
No
DK
Total
8.8
19.8
14.1
84.0
68.3
70.0
7.3
12.0
15.9
Cramer’s V = 0.119, p < 0.001
10.8
80.5
8.7
(n=9,966; respondents not entitled to vote excluded),
There are some other striking findings concerning the
variable “going to vote though did not intend to do so”.
There seems to be a strong association between the educational background and the power of the Wahl-O-Mat to
push people to go to the elections (see Figure 4.5). The
higher the degree of formal education is, the lower ranges
the capacity of the Wahl-O-Mat to mobilize people to vote.
Yet this finding must be interpreted carefully, too. The important point is that the levels of political interest and participation are augmented by the educational degree. This
means that among those with a university degree there are
fewer who the Wahl-O-Mat could mobilize because they
had already been politically active before playing the tool.
Figure 4.5 – Formal education attainment (mobilization to vote, %)
(n = 9,966; respondents not entitled to vote excluded),
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4.6. Discussion: deep impact?
What can be said about the impact of the Wahl-O-Mat?
What are the major findings? We found strong evidence
that an online application like the Wahl-O-Mat has the
power to mobilize individual offline political participation.
The tool stimulates activities that go far beyond just using
an Internet device. Moreover, in the wake of using the net
application we observe effects in different forms of offline
political participation. Users talked about the results the
tool has processed; users were stimulated to look for further political information; users were motivated to go to
the ballot boxes although they had not planned to do so
before they started playing the Wahl-O-Mat.
Still, for methodological reasons we had to rely on the users’ perceptions and their subjective ex-ante guesses about
what effects the tool might have on their political participation. Being restricted to data generated by an on-exit survey
right after the use of the tool, we had no opportunity to revisit the respondents at a later point of time in order to ask
whether the expected effects had indeed become reality.
Nor could we apply other methods (e.g., participant observation) to precisely register manifest effects on participation. Therefore, uncertainty remains about whether the
predicted consequences really did take place. Nevertheless,
because the numbers were very high, we expect that, if not
the entire predicted amount, then at least a reasonable proportion of the expected mobilization really did occur.
Our findings indicate that Internet activities are not insulated, but that there is a “link” between visiting political
websites and offline participation. The “first link” in this
chain refers to the group of those using political websites.
We found that the typical Wahl-O-Mat user is neither an
average citizen nor an average Internet surfer. But the peo-
ple using the application have a high educational background and represent the segment of politically active citizens. Wahl-O-Mat users consider themselves interested in
politics; they participate in parties on average more than
other citizens and frequently take part in political discussions. Thus, many of those playing the tool were already
politically active before coming into contact with the WahlO-Mat.
The “second link” occurs after the users have played the
tool. After the Wahl-O-Mat sessions, the quality and extent
of participation changes within a large group of users
merely because of this usage. This is a clear media effect, a
change which can unmistakably traced back to using a specific media application, here an Internet tool (for similar
findings, see: Emmer and Vowe, 2004: 204-6).
But who is being mobilized? Does the tool mobilize the
mobilized, or does it really make a difference by increasing
political participation beyond what could normally be observed? At first glance, it might seem that the Wahl-O-Mat
mobilizes those who participate intensively anyway. People
who are usually inclined to talk about politics are going to
talk about the Wahl-O-Mat and its results, too. The Internet motivates those who usually seek political information
(for example, by using the Wahl-O-Mat!) to continue with
this political engagement.
Beyond the mobilization of the mobilized, in our analysis
we could identify effects on those who consider themselves
not politically interested, among those who usually do not
participate in politics. 14 percent of the interviewees are not
at all politically involved. Although comparably small, this
group does exist and is also partly mobilized by the WahlO-Mat. Thus, the Wahl-O-Mat is able to move people who
are not by nature prone to participation.
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90
In one item we particularly looked for a significant
change of behaviour by addressing people who planned to
refrain from one specific but salient form of political participation before they used the Wahl-O-Mat: taking part in
elections. Here we found a small, yet remarkable number of
people who were motivated by the tool (and only by the
tool) to take advantage of their right to vote. Considering
the popularity of the application and the high number of
people using the Wahl-O-Mat, this effect may influence
about hundreds of thousands of people in the federal election – this being a very tentative guess.
To sum it up: Tools such as the Wahl-O-Mat have become increasingly popular. Voting indicators have emerged
as indispensable elements in pre-election periods. To some
degree they will make a difference, they will have a changing impact on the political and democratic culture of a society – judged from our findings: for the better.
CHAPTER FIVE
More than toys? A first assessment of voting
advice applications in Switzerland 1
ANDREAS LADNER, GABRIELA FELDER, JAN FIVAZ
To what extent are Voting Advice Applications (VAAs)
more than toys and should political scientists be held accountable for the VAAs they produce? A toy is basically an
object to play with, but toys are also important tools for
learning about the real world and promoting the process of
socialisation. If VAAs are toys they are meant to playfully
attract people to politics, provide them with information,
increase their interest in politics and motivate them to participate in elections. If they are more than toys they additionally have a direct impact on the votes of their users and
therefore on the outcome of elections. In this sense it is no
longer the aspect of ‘learning by playing’ but much more
the aspect of being an important element in the course of
elections which has to be addressed. And: If we have to
admit that VAAs have an impact on the outcome of elections then the second question becomes important. If
VAAs are to be taken seriously to what extent can their
providers be held accountable? Should they only be accountable for the quality of the tool itself or also for a possible influence on the outcome of elections? Can a clear
distinction be made between offering a new form of sup-
1
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Voting Advice
Applications (VAAs): between charlatanism and political science” conference at the University of Antwerp, May 16, 2008.
92
Andreas Ladner - Gabriela Felder - Jan Fivaz
port for decision-making and influencing electoral behaviour?
Based on the experience with the increasingly popular
Swiss VAA smartvote 2 and the results of a major research
project analysing the use and impact of smartvote on the
Swiss national elections in 2007 3 we shall – although tentatively at this stage – try to answer these two questions.
For a better understanding of the functioning and the
importance of smartvote (section 5.2) we will start by looking
at some characteristics of the Swiss electoral system (section 5.1). In sections 5.3 and 5.4 we will present empirical
evidence about the use of smartvote and the role and the importance attached to it by voters and candidates. Section
5.5 will focus on the accountability question and the possibilities and limits of VAAs within the Swiss legal framework. The final section 5.6 offers a short conclusion and an
outlook on further developments and challenges likely to
occur in the years to come.
5.1. Elections and the Electoral System in Switzerland
Design and set-up of a VAA as well as its use by parties,
candidates and voters depend largely on country-specific
characteristics of the electoral system and the way citizens
elect parties or candidates. Both the electoral system and
the low turnout in elections make VAAs in Switzerland especially useful and important.
Politics in Switzerland take place in a very fragmented social context. The country is divided into 26 cantons, which
2
<http://www.smartvote.ch>.
The research project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. It is part of a large research programme called “Challenges to
Democracy in the 21st Century” (NCCR Democracy).
3
Chapter Five - More than toys? A first assessment of VAAs in Switzerland
also form the electoral constituencies for the elections of
the national parliament. The Swiss parliament consists of
two symmetric and non-congruent chambers (Lijphart,
1999): the National Council (Nationalrat) and the Council of
States (Ständerat). The National Council has 200 seats and is
elected by means of a proportional system; the Council of
States has 46 seats and is elected by a majority system 4.
Thus elections for the National Council are generally considered as more party-oriented and the elections for the
Council of States as candidate-oriented.
The seats for the National Council are assigned to the
cantons according to their population size: the six smallest
cantons have only one seat whereas the canton of Zurich,
the largest canton, has 34 seats. Accordingly, the number of
candidates running for office varies between one candidate
in the canton of Uri and 804 in the canton of Zurich
(Fivaz, 2007; Bundesamt für Statistik, 2007). The cantons
differ also in various other aspects: language, religion and
economic structure. Subsequently, cantonal party systems
differ widely for example with regard to the number of parties and the degree of party competition (Ladner 2004a;
2004b).
A further aspect of the social and political heterogeneity
of Switzerland is the fragmentation of the political parties
(Ladner, 2002). Switzerland has a large number of parties
with a relatively low share of votes, parties are decentralised
and the cantonal and local sections have far-reaching
autonomy. Furthermore, it is not unusual that there are diverse political positions within a single party. Even individ4
There are some exceptions to these rules: In cantons with just one
seat in the National Council the effects of PR disappear and the canton
of Jura uses the proportional counting procedure for the election of the
Council of States as well.
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94
ual candidates may take autonomous positions (see table
5.10) and resist the dictate of their party leaders.
While electing their members of parliament Swiss voters
have the possibility to express their specific preferences for
parties as well as for single candidates. First, every voter has
as many votes as his constituency has seats (e.g., in the canton of Uri with one seat, voters have one vote and in the
canton of Zurich with 34 seats they have 34 votes). Secondly, voters can split their votes among different parties
(e.g., in the canton of Zurich a voter can give four votes to
party A, ten to party B and 20 to party C). Thirdly, voters
can support their favourite candidates by giving them two
votes instead of one (so-called cumulative voting; e.g., in
the canton of Zurich a voter could vote for 17 candidates
with two votes for each). These rules make it possible to
compose a customized ballot according to one’s personal
political preferences.
Due to the fragmentation of the political and the party
system Swiss voters can choose among a big number of
parties and political positions, and quite often it is rather
difficult to get to know all parties and candidates (particularly in a canton like Zurich with over 800 candidates).
Compared to voters confronted with a two-party system it
is definitely more time-consuming for Swiss voters to
gather the necessary information about parties and candidates. Nevertheless, Swiss voters seem to appreciate these
possibilities increasingly. The share of swing voters has increased in the last years (Linder, 2005) as well as the share
of those using the possibilities offered by the electoral system to compose their customized ballots according to their
individual preferences (Burger, 2001). Here, candidatebased VAAs like smartvote step in and offer the much
needed information for choosing appropriate parties and
candidates.
Despite the far-reaching possibilities to express one’s
preferences, electoral turnout in Switzerland is very low
compared to other countries and this is not an entirely new
phenomenon. Since 1975 electoral participation has never
been higher than 50 percent. The lowest score up to now
was in the 1995 elections when only 42.2 percent of those
entitled to vote participated. Since then turnout has increased again: 43.3 percent in 1999, 45.2 percent in 2003
and 48.3 percent in 2007 5. In contrast to countries with
turnout rates around 80 percent, a large proportion of
Swiss voters are waiting to be mobilized, which is a welcome challenge for VAAs trying to increase political participation.
5.2. Differences between smartvote and other VAAs
There are two major VAAs in Switzerland. The smaller
one, which is called Politarena, is based on the concept of
the pioneer platform StemWijzer, very much like the German Wahl-O-Mat. The bigger one, smartvote, takes a different
approach which adapts much better to the specific characteristics of the Swiss electoral system and the needs of the
voters. The concept of smartvote has been the basis for other
applications such as Politikkabine, Koimipasva and Holyrood.
Compared to other VAAs smartvote is more comprehensive as regards its additional features as well as its extensibility. The main differences between smartvote and its competitors are the following (for a better discussion, see: Fivaz
and Schwarz, 2007: 6f):
- smartvote is capable of managing multiple elections with
5
<http://www.politik-stat.ch/nrw2007CHwb_de.html>;
27/11/2009.
accessed
95
96
-
-
-
-
overlapping constituencies at the same time (e.g., one
national, one cantonal and two local elections).
smartvote calculates voting recommendations according
to the electoral system and constituency (electoral district) 6 at the level of single candidates as well as at the
level of lists/parties.
The smartvote-questionnaire – which contains more than
70 questions – is more than twice as long as questionnaires used by other tools. Hence the recommendation
is based on more empirical data and therefore more reliable.
Besides Kieskompas, smartvote is the only VAA which includes additional visual analytical tools like the smartspider and the smartmap graphs (see figure 5.1 and figure
5.2).
Finally, time series analyses are possible as all the data of
past elections are stored.
Figure 5.1 – smartspiders of Liberals, Christian Democrats and Green Party
Source: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24th October 2007
6
StemWijzer for instance provides one recommendation for the whole
election. In Switzerland not every party necessarily runs for election in
every constituency and local and regional party sections might vary in
their political positions, hence a meaningful voting recommendation
has to account for these specific circumstances.
Figure 5.2 – smartmap of Swiss parties in the National Council
Source: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24th October 2007
5.3. The Use of smartvote
When smartvote was first presented to the voters in 2003 a
modest number of 255.000 ‘voting recommendations’ 7
were made, while Politarena reached 135,000 users. Since
then, VAAs have become increasingly popular. During the
run-up to the elections for the Swiss parliament in October
7
In Switzerland this is a prevalent term which may be different in other
countries where VAAs have come into use.
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98
2007 smartvote issued about 963.000 recommendations.
Compared to 2003 the use of smartvote had increased almost
fourfold in 2007.
The increasing use of VAAs can certainly be explained by
technical progress and the increase of Internet access. In
2006 over 75 percent of the Swiss population had access to
the Internet 8. Besides the high rate of Internet access there
are additional factors that are fostering the popularity of
VAAs. Political parties are facing severe challenges: Within
the last 20 to 30 years traditional ties between voters and
parties are loosening (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Walgrave et al., 2008a), the number of party members is decreasing and the volatility rate and the number of swing
votes is rising. Dalton, for example, draws quite a pessimistic picture of representative, party-centred democracies
with more and more citizens growing distrustful of politicians and disillusioned about the functioning of the democratic processes (Dalton, 2002; 2007). Although it is still an
open question to which degree this pessimistic picture of
today’s representative democracies meets reality we assume
that these developments – at least in their tendency – foster
the use of VAAs, which are offering a customized and
transparent new form of decision-making beyond the usual
ways of selecting candidates and parties.
Some further figures about the use of smartvote on both
sides – the one of the voters as well as the one of the parties and candidates running for office – will document the
growing importance of such tools.
8
See <http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/16/
04/key/approche_ globale.tables.30106.html>; accessed 28/04/2008.
5.3.1. Use by Candidates
Since smartvote does not code party positions but asks the
candidates to position themselves and also takes into account the positions of every single candidate, the participation of all parties and candidates is an essential precondition for the additional value smartvote offers to the voters.
Unless all relevant candidates are in the database the additional value for the voters is rather low. To what extent do
the candidates answer the smartvote questionnaire? And
what are the incentives to take part?
The percentage of candidates answering the 73 questions
is a first indication for the seriousness of the VAA smartvote.
Table 5.1 highlights a sharp increase of interest in smartvote
in the National Council elections of 2007. In 2003, only
about 50 percent of the almost 3000 candidates participated
and answered the questions. Four years later, about 85 percent of the 3100 candidates took part in smartvote and answered the questions. If we look at the candidates elected
in the course of the elections, the figures are even more
impressive. In 2003 about 70 percent of the candidates
elected participated in smartvote, and in 2007 more than 90
percent did so. This extraordinary coverage also holds for
elections at lower level, which are also depicted in table 5.1.
Such high percentages make it possible to calculate and issue meaningful voting recommendations for the public.
Thanks to media partnerships with relevant Swiss media
(from SF DRS, NZZ Online to 20Minuten) 9 smartvote managed to extend its reach far beyond the Internet community. The media published articles and portrayed the candidates with the aid of the political profiles generated by
smartvote; they broadcast telecasts or radio transmissions re9
See all media partners <http://www.smartvote.ch/side_menu/
partner/partners.php?who=v>; accessed 28/04/2008.
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100
ferring to the VAA smartvote; and the print media used the
visual analytical tools such as the smartspider (see figure 5.1).
Media and candidates depend on each other. On the one
hand, candidates have a greater motivation to publish their
political preferences in the VAA when they know that large
media partners will spread their political profiles also in the
press and, on the other hand, the media themselves have an
obvious interest in having a well-populated database at their
disposal.
Table 5.1 – smartvote-participation by candidates, 2003-2008
Elections
Swiss parliament 2003
Participation by
candidates (%)
Participation of
elected MPs (%)
50.3
85.3
69.5
93.5
62.9
72.9
75.1
63.0
61.7
59.7
85.0
77.7
78.9
91.0
83.4
85.6
70.0
91.7
70.1
80.6
57.4
50.4
83.8
98.4
93.6
78.3
Regional parliaments
Canton of Thurgau 2004
Canton of St. Gallen 2004
Canton of Geneva 2005
Canton of Berne 2006
Canton of Zurich 2007
Canton of Lucerne 2007
Local parliaments
City of Berne 2004
City of St. Gallen 2004
City of Zurich 2006
City of Winterthur 2006
Source: <http://www.smartvote.ch>
Given the growing popularity of smartvote, there remain
only a few candidates who do not present their political positions on smartvote. If they are not present they risk losing
media coverage and even votes.
The remarkable participation of candidates and the high
interest of the media in publishing contributions based on
smartvote supports the idea that smartvote is more than a toy.
Before we search for more evidence in this regard, we will
address the response to smartvote on the user side. Even the
most sophisticated VAA remains unsuccessful when voters
ignore it. How did the voters respond to the VAA services
in Switzerland?
5.3.2. Use by Voters
To what extent do voters turn their attention to smartvote?
The absolute figures in table 5.2 are not very impressive at
first sight. Switzerland, however, is a small country with an
electorate of only about 4.9 million voters (2007). This
changes the first impression considerably. The index, which
relates smartvote users to the number of people voting (absolute number of voting recommendations per election in relation to voter turnout), amounts to about 40 percent in
2007 10. The use at national level has increased almost fourfold between 2003 and 2007. This evolution can partly also
be attributed to the repeated use at other levels (cantonal or
local) and to the intense media coverage in 2007 already
mentioned.
10
This figure allows a comparison across constituencies and time. It
does not, however, represent the actual number of people using smartvote, which is considerably lower. If we control for users who have received a voting recommendation more than once, the number of different users amounts to about 350,000-375,000 or 12-15 percent of the
citizens taking part in the elections.
101
102
Table 5.2 – Use of smartvote 2003-2007 (selected elections)
Elections
smartvote use
(absolute)
255,000
963,000
smartvote use
index 11
11.7
40.6
16,000
7,750
35,900
30,465
9,864
16.2
13.7
16.7
10.4
9.1
4,000
9,500
22,900
15,100
23.4
28.9
24.9
22.8
Regional parliaments
Canton of Thurgau 2004
Canton of Berne 2006
Canton of Zurich 2007
Canton of Lucerne 2007
Local parliaments
City of St. Gallen 2004
City of Berne 2004
City of Geneva 2005
City of Zurich 2006
Source: <http://www.smartvote.ch>
Outstanding and rather unexpected are the participation
rates at the various local city elections. With an average of
25 percent the smartvote use index reaches a higher degree
than at cantonal (state) level. This is somehow unexpected
as local elections have generally smaller numbers of candidates and the value added by smartvote could be assumed to
be smaller.
What do candidates and users/potential voters really
think of smartvote and how seriously do they take it? The
next section tries to answer these questions on the basis of
11
smartvote use in absolute numbers of recommendations issued relative
to the voter turnout.
different surveys among candidates as well as among voters
or users.
5.4. Role and importance of smartvote for candidates and users
In order to judge the role a VAA plays in the course of
elections and the importance attached to such a tool by
parties, candidates and users we will look at surveys to gain
a first impression. We will examine whether the candidates
considered smartvote useful for their campaign, how important they thought it was for them personally and for their
party and on what basis they answered the various questions on political issues. We shall then turn to the voters
and ask to what extent they think smartvote influenced their
voting behaviour.
5.4.1. The perceptions of the candidates
Some questions of the post-electoral survey among Swiss
candidates 12 running for election for the National Council
in 2007 were dedicated to the use and perception of smartvote. These questions will give us some idea as to how the
candidates judge the role and importance of VAAs.
A large majority of respondents insisted on the usefulness
of smartvote for their election campaign. About 70 percent
considered their participation rather useful and nearly onefourth believed smartvote to be definitely advantageous.
Hardly anybody perceived the VAA as damaging for their
personal election outcome.
12
Of the 1.700 survey respondents around 95 per cent did (N=1.660)
participate on smartvote. This survey has been realized in cooperation
between the Universities of Berne, Geneva, Zurich and the IDHEAP
in Lausanne.
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Table 5.3 – Advantage / damage by smartvote
Advantage / damage estimation
Definitely advantageous
Rather advantageous
Neither nor
Rather damaging
Definitely damaging
N = 1579
Responses by
candidates (%)
23.7
45.8
28.9
1.4
0.2
100.0
Source: NCCR Democracy, post-electoral survey of candidates 2007
It is interesting to note that the use of smartvote was seen
as even more advantageous by those who were not elected.
Presumably these candidates were less prominent and had
fewer possibilities to make their political positions public.
In any case they blame factors other than the VAA for their
electoral failure.
Do the views regarding the added value through smartvote
vary according to the size of the different voting districts
(cantons)? As already mentioned, voters in the canton of
Zurich have to make their choice out of a much larger
number of candidates than voters in the canton of Jura
(804 as opposed to 16). To get a voting recommendation
for 34 seats out of 804 candidates in Zurich might thus be
seen as a greater help than for two seats out of 16 candidates in Jura. Such expectations, however, cannot be confirmed. In the eyes of the candidates there are no striking
differences among the different cantons (see table 5.4).
However, there is a difference in awareness between the
language regions. Up to 27 percent of the Germanspeaking region speaks of a definite advantage, compared
to only 12 percent in the French-speaking region, where
smartvote is still less known. This effect is even more pronounced in the Italian-speaking part, where smartvote has
been launched as late as 2007.
Table 5.4 – Advantage / damage by smartvote
according to size of canton and language region (in percent)
Size of canton 13 Definitel Rather Neither Rather Definitel
Number of seats y adv.
adv.
nor
dam.
y dam.
1.00 / 16 +
2.00 / 10 to 15
3.00 / 5 to 9
4.00 / 1 to 4
Total
Language
24.2
24.9
22.1
21.3
23.7
45.8
47.1
45.3
42.7
45.8
27.8
27.1
31.4
34.7
28.9
1.9
.8
1.0
1.3
1.4
0.3
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.2
Definitel Rather Neither Rather Definitel
y adv.
adv.
nor
dam.
y dam.
(N)
677
361
408
75
1,521
(N)
German
27.0
46.1
25.2
1.5
0.2
1199
French
12.1
47.0
39.9
.7
0.4
281
Italian
4.9
29.3
63.4
2.4
0.0
41
Total
23.7
45.8
28.9
1.4
0.2
1,521
13
‘1’ corresponds to >900,000 inhabitants; ‘2’ corresponds to 400,000
– 899,999; ‘3’ corresponds to 200,000 – 399,999; ‘4’ corresponds to
<199,999; see <http://www.badac.ch/DE/news/typologies.html>;
accessed 28/04/2008.
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106
Table 5.5 – Advantage/damage by smartvote participation
according to party (in percent)
Definit.
adv.
Rather
adv.
Neither
nor
Rather
dam.
Definit.
dam.
(N)
14.4
45.9
37.6
2.1
-
194
25.1
38.4
34.0
2.5
-
203
24.2
40.3
33.3
1.6
0.5
186
25.0
27.9
33.3
21.7
53.3
44.7
55.6
52.2
21.3
26.6
11.1
26.1
0.4
0.8
-
-
244
244
27
23
30.6
56.1
12.1
1.3
-
157
19.7
46.1
31.6
2.6
-
76
Others
8.8
45.6
42.1
1.8
1.8
57
Total
23.7
45.8
28.9
1.4
0.2
1,521
Parties
Christian
Democrats
Radicals
Swiss People’s
Party
Social Democrats
Green Party
Green Liberal Party
Liberal Party
Evangelical People’s
P.
Fed. Democratic
Union
Seen through the eyes of the candidates, the expectation
that small parties – Green Liberal Party, Evangelical People's Party, and Swiss Democrats – believe more strongly in
the use of smartvote can be confirmed. smartvote offers
smaller and larger parties equal opportunities to present
their candidates. There is no party which does not consider
its participation on smartvote to be at least ‘rather advantageous’ (table 5.5). There appears to be a parallel to the findings of Walgrave et al. (2008a) regarding a Belgian survey of
a VAA in the form of a TV show called ‘Do the Vote Test’,
where VAAs were taken rather seriously by political parties
(or rather members of parliament). This finding led Wal-
grave et al. to the conclusion that VAAs have to be taken
seriously by political scientists as well.
Importance of smartvote in the eyes of the candidates. How do the
candidates evaluate the importance of smartvote for themselves as compared to its importance for their party, the
media and the voters? On a scale from 0 (‘no importance’)
to 10 (‘great importance’) the average importance for the
candidates amounts to 5.8 (see table 5.6). smartvote is probably not decisive for the candidates but at least perceived as
meaningful. Interesting to note are the rather small differences between the parties. In the eyes of the candidates
smartvote is more important for the media and the voters.
Table 5.6 – Importance attributed to smartvote by parties
(aggregated candidate answers)
Estimation of importance of smartvote for:
You
personally?
Your
party?
Media?
The
voter?
Mean
5.68
5.55
6.59
5.83
N
181
179
180
Parties
Christian Democrats
Radicals
Swiss People's Party
Social Democrats
Green Party
Total
Mean
N
5.76
197
5.49
189
6.26
192
181
5.77
193
Mean
5.79
5.55
6.53
6.37
N
178
177
179
176
Mean
6.08
6.02
6.02
N
226
221
224
Mean
N
5.71
234
5.99
220
6.30
225
6.17
223
6.22
229
Mean
5.77
5.77
6.25
6.02
N
1453
1412
1416
1423
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108
If we split up the answers among the language regions
within Switzerland the differences become more salient
(table 5.7). In the German-speaking part candidates attach a
greater importance to smartvote (6.2 to 6.4) than in the
French-speaking part (3.8 to 5.8).
In the German-speaking part the VAA smartvote seems to
be perceived as being more important, but perhaps the
lower importance is mainly due to the fact that smartvote is
not as well established in the French-speaking part yet. The
more broadly VAA tools are used the bigger their importance.
Table 5.7 – Importance attributed to smartvote
according to language region
Estimation of importance of smartvote for:
You
personally?
Language
German
French
Italian
Total
Your
party?
Media?
The
voter?
Mean
6.36
6.20
6.40
6.29
N
1133
1109
1107
1115
3.76
4.36
5.84
5.19
283
266
271
271
2.92
3.03
4.76
4.24
Mean
N
Mean
N
Mean
N
37
5.77
1453
37
5.77
1412
38
6.25
1416
37
6.02
1423
Party influence on candidates answering the questionnaire. Do the
candidates answer the 73 questions of the VAA on their
own or do they follow party instructions? According to
their own account slightly more than one-third of the respondents received instructions from their parties (table
5.8). Among the five biggest parties the candidates of the
left-wing Social Democrats received instructions far more
often (56.6 percent of the respondents) compared to only
20.5 percent of the candidates of the right-wing Swiss People's Party.
Table 5.8 – Guidance / direction by the party (in percent)
Guidance/direction by the party:
Parties
Obtained
Not obtained
N
Christian Democrats
37.9
62.1
190
Radicals
41.6
58.4
202
Swiss People's Party
20.5
79.5
185
Social Democrats
56.6
43.4
242
Green Party
17.0
83.0
247
CH
35.4
64.6
1,521
Receiving instructions does not necessarily mean that
candidates followed them when answering the 73 smartvote
questions. Approximately 45 percent followed the instructions at least partially and some 10 percent totally. If the
candidates received instructions the extent to which they
followed them does not vary strongly between the different
parties.
What influenced the candidates most while answering the
73 questions? Table 5.9 reveals interesting results. Most
important with an average of 9.1 (0: no importance; 10:
most important) is the candidate’s own political position,
followed by the position of the party. The assumed political
positions of the electorate are on average not seen as very
important (average of 3.6 only), which seems to negate the
assumption of a strategic self-positioning of the candidates.
The parties or in this case the candidates do not follow the
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public as it is depicted in other studies (Walgrave et al.,
2008a). Once more there are no important differences between the candidates of the different parties.
Table 5.9 – Points of reference for answering the smartvote questionnaire
Points of reference attributed to:
Party
Party
program colleagues
Parties
Other
parties
Own
Assumed
political position of
position electorate
Christian
Democrats
Mean
5.24
3.45
2.58
9.02
3.99
N
184
185
183
184
183
Radicals
Mean
4.66
3.21
2.01
9.10
3.73
N
199
199
197
198
196
Swiss People's Mean
Party
N
5.84
3.49
2.15
9.09
3.84
179
177
177
181
178
Social
Democrats
Mean
5.41
3.51
2.20
9.44
3.30
N
242
241
240
240
238
Green Party
Mean
4.68
3.40
2.03
9.44
2.70
N
231
229
230
233
230
Mean
5.32
3.64
2.27
9.09
3.57
N
1473
1466
1460
1475
1460
Total
What about the perception of smartvote by the voters?
Evidently it is not enough to have media partners and candidates participating, the voting advice tool also needs to be
used by the citizens.
5.4.2. The Perceptions of the Voters
In the NCCR Democracy research project ‘smart voting’ we
not only take a closer look at the candidates using smartvote
but also at the users and potential voters. This can either be
done through the information the users reveal once they
have entered the website or it can be done through additional surveys.
The users of smartvote are left-wing computer literates: i.e.,
they are young, predominantly male, better-educated and
they most likely vote for the Social Democrats. Between
2003 and 2007 the percentage of female users increased
from 24.1 (N=1297) to 32.5 (N=27,222) percent. Likewise,
smartvote has become a little more popular among people
above fifty years of age (see figure 5.3).
Figure 5.3 – The age of the users: national elections 2003 & 2007 (%)
40.0
35.0
30.0
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
to 17
18 to 29
30 to 39
40 to 49
50 to 59
60 to 69
70 to
Age Groups
NC 2003
NC 2007
Source: smartvote and NCCR user surveys 2003 and 2007
(N 2003 =1,279; N 2007 = 13,277)
That smartvote is especially attractive for voters from the
left-wing side of the political spectrum is revealed by the
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question which party they voted for in the last national
elections. Table 5.10 reveals a strong bias towards the Social Democrats. More than forty percent of the users in
2007 voted for the Social Democrats in 2003. In the 2003
elections the Social Democrats only scored around 23 percent. This table, which is based on a pre-election survey,
also reveals the loss the Social Democrats suffered in 2007
but it does not reveal the gains of the Swiss People’s Party.
By combining such survey results with the information the
users leave on the website, however, we may be able to
gather information which could help to predict and understand the results ahead.
Table 5.10 – Users’ party preferences and results of national elections 2007
Voted for
in 2003
Parties
Christian Democrats
Radicals
Swiss People’s Party
Social Democrats
Greens
Green Liberal Party
N
Voted for
in 2007
Diff.
8.7
10.1
1.4
17.2
14.4
-2.8
14.2
9.4
-4.8
42.1
28.7
-13.4
11.4
17.8
6.4
0
7.2
7.2
8,506
16,611
Source: NCCR Democracy,
pre-post electoral survey of smartvote users 2007
Results
2007
14.5
15.8
28.9
19.5
9.6
1.4
-
What is the effect of smartvote on the users? Almost 55
percent of users claimed that smartvote improved their
sources of information and for an additional 30 percent this
was at least partially true (54.3% true, 30.4% rather true,
N=17,331). Significant numbers of users were particularly
motivated to search for more information about specific
political issues (16.4% true, 32.6% rather true, N=17,382)
and about specific candidates or parties (20.7% true, 35.9%
rather true, N=17,376). And more than half the users
claimed that smartvote motivated them somewhat to discuss
politics (28.4.3% true, 37.2% rather true, N=17,410) or parties and candidates (31.2% true, 36.9% rather true,
N=17,364) with other citizens.
Did smartvote matter? About two thirds of the smartvote users who also participated in the survey claimed that smartvote
made an impact on their voting decision (see table 5.11).
Not astonishingly, those who claimed that smartvote motivated them to take part in the elections are also those who
stated that smartvote made an impact on their decision.
About 90 percent of those who were motivated to take part
were also influenced by the recommendation whereas only
50 percent of those who would have participated anyway
claimed that smartvote made an impact on their voting decision.
If we look at the different age groups, the influence of
smartvote was much bigger among younger citizens: Among
those under 30 years of age, more than 70 percent claimed
that smartvote influenced their decision; among those over
50, only 50 percent claimed a similar effect. Obviously,
smartvote plays a more important role for the younger and
not traditionally participating citizens.
However, only a small minority of those who claimed
that smartvote had an influence on their voting decision copied the recommendation given by smartvote directly onto the
ballot list (15.0%, N=10,650). This is not astonishing since
such a vote only makes sense in some smaller cantons. In
the larger cantons the percentage of candidates who are
very likely not to get elected or who belong to parties
which will not play an important role in parliament is much
higher.
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smartvote increased cross-list voting (Panaschieren) and
turned the users’ attention to other candidates and parties.
About 60 percent state that they elected candidates from
different lists and two thirds claimed that they voted for
candidates and parties they usually did not vote for. Finally,
one third did not vote for candidates or parties they usually
voted for after having consulted the matching list provided
by smartvote.
Table 5.11 – Agreement with the following sentences (in percent)
Answer option
Did the smartvote recommendation influence which
parties or which candidates you voted for?
Did you copy the smartvote recommendation without any changes onto your voting list?
Based on the smartvote recommendation, did you
prefer to vote for candidates from different lists?
vote for parties and candidates you would otherwise not have voted for?
abstain from voting for parties and candidates you
would have voted for otherwise?
In percent
N
66.5
16,385
15.0
10,650
61.0
10,580
66.6
10,559
34.9
10,372
An overwhelming majority also claims that smartvote
helped them make their decisions and that it was the most
important information source (57 percent) among other
sources like newspapers, political events, party/candidate
advertisements received by mail, and so on (see table 5.12).
Table 4.12 – How important was the following election campaign instrument for getting information about parties and candidates for you?
Instrument
Important
Rather
imp.
Rather
unimp.
Unimp.
N
The VAA smartvote
57.3%
29.2%
9.0%
4.5%
17,760
Newspaper
advertisement of
parties and
candidates
4.2%
20.9%
31.9%
43.0%
17367
Political event of
their parties
4.2%
12.2%
21.2%
62.4%
17,191
Stand of parties
and candidates on
the street
2.1%
7.6%
23.1%
67.3%
17,287
Election Internet
pages of parties and
candidates
12.9%
27.9%
23.3%
36.0%
17,444
Posters in the
streets
3.1%
13.7%
32.3%
50.8%
17,468
Advertisement of
parties and
candidates in the
letterbox
4.9%
14.6%
25.5%
55.0%
17,506
Online media
38.1%
30.3%
15.5%
16.1%
17,039
Supraregional and
national TV
channel
respectively
27.0%
34.4%
16.7%
21.9%
17,105
Local TV channel
6.9%
13.9%
20.8%
58.3%
16,423
Supraregional and
national radio
channel
respectively
14.9%
24.8%
23.9%
36.4%
16,805
Local radio channel
4.8%
12.3%
23.0%
59.9%
16,650
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Important
Rather
imp.
Rather
unimp.
Unimp.
N
Supraregional and
national
newspapers
respectively
26.9%
34.3%
20.8%
18.0%
17,194
Local newspapers
20.6%
26.7%
24.3%
28.5%
17,302
Instrument
Source: NCCR Democracy, post-electoral survey of smartvote users 2007
5.4.3. Conclusion
The Swiss experiences with smartvote, the participation of
an overwhelming majority of the candidates and our survey
results led us to the conclusion that VAAs – contrary to the
findings for Belgium (Walgrave et al., 2008a) – are more
than tools for checking voters’ existing preferences without
influence on their voting behaviour. Of course, our survey
results are somewhat biased since they stem to the greater
part from younger, better educated male citizens from the
left wing side of the political spectrum. Nevertheless we
dare to say – and will focus on that issue in later analyses –
that VAAs in Switzerland tend to lead to an increase of
split voting and may in the long run even bring other candidates and parties into office.
There are probably different reasons for the bigger impact of VAAs in Switzerland. First of all, the Swiss (multiparty) electoral system, where voters cannot only vote for a
party but can also express their preferences for particular
candidates, makes a VAA a very useful source of political
information. It provides a real service for voters who have
to choose among quite a few and sometimes up to several
hundred candidates and more than a dozen parties (see details in section 5.1). Secondly, the participation rate of over
85 percent in the smartvote database entices the media to use
smartvote as a new source of information – particularly the
eye-catching visual analysis of the smartspider and smartmap.
Finally, the media interest in the VAA further amplifies interest and even produces some sort of pressure to be represented in such a tool as candidate or party.
Because VAAs can be more than toys, political scientists
should not stay away from them. It is their responsibility
too that such tools are set up as transparently as possible
on the grounds of scientific knowledge about political issues and the political space. In order to prevent possible
distortions these tools have to be researched continuously.
In this respect, scientists could be held accountable. In the
following section we will now focus in greater detail on this
normative question.
5.5. Should providers of VAAs be held accountable for what they offer?
On the basis of a legal study (Rütsche, 2008), which was
also part of our research project, we are able to address the
accountability problem. According to Rütsche’s findings
for the case of Switzerland, the use of VAAs has first of all
to be reviewed in the light of the right to free and undistorted opinion formation, guaranteed by Article 34 (section
2) of the Federal Constitution. According to this constitutional principle it is mainly a question of potential dangers
of distortion of democratic opinion formation and decision-making by VAAs. In a worst-case scenario VAAs become an instrument for political manipulation by particular
interests. If VAA providers are members of (or affiliated
to) pressure groups, for instance, the potential abuse increases enormously. Even if there is no worry of real manipulation, VAAs could distort the voter’s will solely by
means of the composition of their content. However, in
principle this right to free and undistorted opinion forma-
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tion does not totally prohibit private propaganda or even
false information in the run-up to elections. The constitutional limits are only transgressed if private actors propagate what is obviously false information to influence the
electoral opinion formation one-sidedly. The basic idea of
VAAs is to inform the voter about political positions of
candidates and/or parties. The aim of that information is to
influence the opinion formation of the voters. As long as
this influence is based on objective political information it
is not only allowed but also desirable. But having the power
to form opinions implies a risk of abuse. VAA providers
holding this power could systematically abuse it for certain
political purposes. The issue of accountability is therefore a
crucial one.
In a first step Rütsche (ibid.: 17f.) focuses on abuse by
(private) providers before he then highlights the responsibility of another actor, the state in this context. According
to the author, systematic forgery by VAA providers happens in cases where:
a) Tendentious questionnaires occur. Certain political orientations and parties are favoured or discriminated against.
However, putting this argument into perspective, it can
be argued that political issues receiving too much onesided emphasis would be noticed by the candidates and
voters and therefore the danger is a rather minor one.
b) Single candidates are replaced before the user sees his voting recommendation. For a voter the accuracy of a voting recommendation – except amateurish forgery – is difficult
to identify. However, this real danger can be diminished
by having several VAAs (with comparable methods) on
the ‘election market’. This is a risk that has not yet been
dealt with in Switzerland, as the VAAs Politarena and
smartvote cannot be easily compared due to their methodological differences.
c) The VAA discriminates against a single candidate or party. For
instance, not all candidates or parties have the same access to the tool. Or the answers provided by the candidates are treated differently. Real one-sided influencing,
however, exists only in case of ‘hidden’ discrimination.
Unacceptable under constitutional law are so-called politically neutral VAAs, which do not give access to all
candidates and parties. Nevertheless, a VAA may include only certain candidates and parties as long as this
is made clear.
Even if there is never a purely objective method of constructing a VAA, systematic forgery does not need to arise.
A VAA should translate political preferences of voters into
a concrete voting decision, like any traditional instrument
of opinion formation. These are normally no more accurate
than any VAA. In general, many voters arrive at a decision
without knowing exactly their own political preferences and
that of the candidates and yet nobody speaks of distortion
of opinion formation. Hence, using VAAs for identifying
political preferences as precisely as possible has nothing to
do with manipulating opinion formation.
However, there is a claim for certain (scientific) VAA
quality standards. Fading out or inadequate weighting of
particular political issues – even in a standardised questionnaire – provokes a bias in the opinion formation. Also, a
lack of questions for important political issues can be tendentious. Finally, any inexact calculation method of the
matching of voter and candidate responses entail the very
same problem.
According to Rütsche (2008) all these risks can be reduced through a competitive VAA ‘election market’ with
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several competing VAAs, which would still need to fulfil
certain minimal standards:
- Transparency regarding sponsoring, financing and
methodology.
- Quality and operation standards implementation.
To what extent must the state be accountable in Switzerland? According to the court, incumbent authorities are not
allowed to advise the voter in any way. However, contributions to the election campaign can increase the quality of
opinion formation if they lead to more balanced information – in the sense of a ‘vital’ democracy. Therefore it is not
a question of whether but rather of how state intervention
may take place. In the context of elections there is a strict
imperative of equal treatment. As long as state intervention
stays neutral (no preference for or discrimination against
one single candidate or party), objective and factual, state
regulations regarding VAAs are constitutional.
What happens when a VVA is directly linked to an electronic voting platform allowing the voters to send their selection of candidates directly to the polls through the Internet, as it was done on the occasion of the Bernese student
council elections in 2005? The Federal Supreme Court confirmed by its judgement that the state must remain strictly
neutral in elections and must treat all candidates and parties
equally. Connection with VAAs is therefore only possible
under restrictive conditions: an organizational, personal and
financial independence of officially promoted VAAs from
political parties and interest groups; as well as high standards regarding a voting advice tool’s quality and operation.
Given such conditions, the official promotion of specific
VAAs would lead to regulatory complications; and in order
to avoid these, the deregulation of the ballot system might
be proposed to facilitate the use of VAAs by the electorate.
This would enable the users of such tools to print their individual electoral recommendations or send them electronically as valid ballots.
In sum, the legal imperatives for state involvement in the
run-up to elections reduce the range of opportunity for action enormously but by providing a legal framework for
VAAs without operating them; the state can contribute to
increased accountability of VAA tools without influencing
the election campaign directly and therefore the election
outcome.
Apart from the right to free and unadulterated opinion
formation, there are also institutional provisions of the
Constitution. In Switzerland, the Constitution contains a
range of guarantees that accord the political parties a special role in the electoral process. Among these guarantees is
Article 137, according to which parties are meant to participate in public opinion formation. Further, Article 149
(see section 5.1 above) allows proportional representation
in National Council elections. If a large number of voters
use VAAs the proportional representation system could be
undermined. The individual electoral recommendations of
candidates compete with the party lists. VAAs give a strong
impetus to ticket splitting. This is not illegal but it could
become a conflict for the constitutional principle of proportional representation, which presupposes that voters
make an initial choice between party lists. Consequently,
the state should not promote VAAs unless they also offer
voting by party lists as an option.
Moreover, we need to ask whether VAAs lead to greater
responsiveness of representative bodies to the voters.
Prima facie responsiveness can be strengthened. However,
there are no institutional safeguards to ensure that politicians once elected actually support the positions they have
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declared through the VAA. Under this arrangement, reference back to the will of the electorate is limited to the act
of voting. Possibilities are thereby opened for politicians to
strategically use VAAs for their own purposes. From a constitutional perspective, this is why it is desirable for such
tools to involve a monitoring of the voting behaviour of
politicians while in office (in Switzerland the NCCR Democracy project smartmonitor has exactly this intention).
Once a VAA like smartvote is connected with a monitoring
system like smartmonitor this negative potential can be reduced remarkably.
To sum up, the degree of accountability varies among the
different actors. As private VAA providers have to maximise the content of the VAA, its quality and transparency,
the state can only provide assistance and control within the
bounds of its legal restrictions. In short, VAA providers are
accountable for maximising the quality of their tool. As
VAAs are regarded as only one out of several information
sources in the election campaign they cannot be made accountable for the election outcome on their own. The state
in contrast can only provide the legal framework for VAAs
and try to legally minimise potential manipulations. Accountability for the tool is therefore shared between the
provider (content, quality, transparency) and the state (legal
framework); accountability for the final election outcome
can only be assumed by all actors together within an election campaign and should be a matter of future analysis in
this context.
5.6. Outlook
After the success of three pilot projects in three Swiss
cantons (GE, NE, ZH), on May 31, 2006 the Federal
Council declared electronic voting a strategic goal which is
to be implemented step by step. Once we vote electronically in Switzerland – so our argument – VAAs will become
indispensable and will have a considerable influence on
party politics. After having selected candidates in a ‘smart’
way, citizens will want to send the list to the polls electronically. VAAs will no longer be regarded as a toy but as a useful instrument to select parties and candidates.
This, of course, leads to new problems and challenges.
We do not believe that it will be possible to agree on ‘politically correct’ questions which all parties accept in their
wording, or that a state office should be responsible for the
questions put forward by the VAAs. We rather think that
the voters should have a choice between different VAAs. It
is up to the voters to decide which VAA is trustworthy and
which voting advice they will follow.
We do believe, however, that transparency and equal access to VAAs is required. Only those VAAs meeting such
minimal standards should be directly linked to the electronic ballot station. Political scientists are very much
needed to research and investigate the functioning of
VAAs. Their findings will help to improve the quality of
VAAs and shed light on the manipulation possibilities of
such tools. Scientists, however, cannot assume responsibility for the results of elections and the social consequences
of these results. Who knows for sure which party is best for
society in the long run? VAAs are one source of information about politics, but they are only one (important) source
among others.
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CHAPTER SIX
Do the Vote Test: The Belgian Voting Aid
Application
MICHIEL NUYTEMANS, STEFAAN WALGRAVE,
KRIS DESCHOUWER
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become increasingly more popular through the years in Europe. It all
started in The Netherlands with a simple print-based VAA
in 1989 only reaching 500 users. VAAs went online in the
second half of the nineties, making it possible to grow very
fast together with the Internet penetration in Europe. Now,
at the end of 2009 there are several VAAs in over 20 countries reaching millions of users in local, regional, national,
and European elections (for a full overview of the rise of
VAAs, see: Walgrave et al., 2008b). VAAs have come a
long way and are now larger than ever.
In Belgium too VAAs have risen fast to become a constant player in every election campaign. The authors of this
article have followed this evolution closely as they created
the largest VAA in Belgium 1. But as scientific researchers
we want to do more than just produce an application we
believe to be a good VAA. We also try to use our experience and the data we collect during the making of the
VAAs for scientific research (e.g., Walgrave et al., 2005;
Walgrave et al., 2008a; Walgrave et al., 2009).
1
When we talk about ‘Belgium’ in this study, we actually mean Flanders, in the north of Belgium, where Dutch is spoken and containing
60% of the Belgian population. In the French speaking part of Belgium, there has only been one VAA in 2004 without much success.
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Michiel Nuytemans - Stefaan Walgrave - Kris Deschouwer
We believe that sharing information on how to make a
VAA and being totally transparent about how the system
works is of the utmost importance. That is why we want to
use this article in the first place to explain our method and
the functioning of the Belgian VAA “Do the Vote Test” in
great detail. In the first place this is important because we
believe that academics should be completely transparent
about their methodology to make it possible for other academics to understand how they work and to be able to
criticize their work and reflect on the phenomenon. Secondly, many academics all over the world are developing
VAAs at the same time struggling with the same issues as
we were and are. It would be a shame to not share the
available expertise. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly,
the users have the right to know how a VAA works. As
they might rely on it for their vote, it is important not to
conceal how the advice to them came about.
At the end of the chapter we will discuss the purpose of
VAAs. After looking into the (possible) impact of VAAs
we argue that the purpose of a VAA should always be to
help voters make a better decision, but never to give a real
voting advice that should be followed blindly.
In the first part of this article we will explain in short how
the VAAs got started in Belgium and what the current
VAA-landscape is in Belgium. Next, we will give insight in
the working and making of the Do the Vote Test.
6.1. VAAs in Belgium. A short history
Inspired by the fast rise and early success of the voting
advice applications in the Netherlands, the Belgian daily De
Standaard started with the first Belgian VAA in 2003. It was
an instant success with 150.000 participants. Since that first
success, De Standaard repeated the formula for the next
Chapter Six - Do the Vote Test: The Belgian Voting Aid Application
elections of 2004 and 2007. Until 2007 they used the technology of Kieskompas.
Late 2002 the Belgian public broadcaster VRT decided to
make its own VAA: Do the Vote Test. Partially based on the
Dutch television format Waar stem ik op?, aired on the
commercial channel SBS6 a year earlier, the VRT broadcasted a television show six weeks before the federal elections of 2003 (Walgrave et al., 2008a). The authors of this
article were asked to form an academic team to develop the
application. As this first application and TV-show were
very successful (even nominated for the Golden Rose of
Luzern) the VRT repeated the formula with the same team
in 2004. That year, three Sunday evening-filling TV-shows
dedicated to stances of parties and voters regarding different issues were broadcasted. The website with the VAA
was very popular, yielding 840.000 advices in the four
weeks preceding the Election Day.
The Do the Vote Test application has been recreated for
every election since. In 2006 a local version was developed.
For the national elections of 2007, the academic team was
expanded to assemble the knowhow of every major university in Flanders. 760.000 advices were delivered. In 2009,
for the regional elections, VRT and De Standaard teamed up
for the latest version of this VAA, making it the biggest of
Belgium with more than 1.000.000 advices given. On a total
population of voters of little more than four million, this is
a very high number. Almost one out of four Flemish voters
got an advice from Do the Vote Test.
In 2009, two other VAAs were active on the Belgian
market: the EU Profiler of EUI and the new VAA The Voice
of Flanders of the commercial broadcaster VTM. This last
VAA compares the position of users with the positions of
party leaders and other important politicians. The popularity of VAAs can also be observed by the rise of amateurs
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making their own VAA for a referendum or a party leader
election 2.
6.2. Do the Vote Test. How does it work
The application follows the basic design of every VAA. It
consists out of questions or statements, the possibility to
give extra weight to certain issues, and finally the result
page. In recent years a recalculation and information page
were added.
6.2.1. The application
We could define a VAA as an online application where
people answer a series of questions, based on which a political profile (the parties or politicians the user is closest to)
is calculated. The type and number of questions, the answer
categories, the way the calculation works and the way the
political profile is presented, can vary between VAAs
(Laros, 2008). The var7iety and possibilities for VAAs are
large. We describe here in detail how the Belgian Do the
Vote Test (from here on, DVT) works.
A voting advice application calculates a party profile for a
user. An extensive voting literature has established that
voters take ideology, issue stances, and manifestos into account when voting but that many other determinants of the
vote play a role too (Fournier et al., 2003; Thomassen, 2005;
Ansolabehere et al., 2008). A person can be a supporter of a
party for many reasons:
2
Two examples are: <http://www.deblauwestemtest.be> (helping
members of the liberal party decide who they want for party leader),
and <http://www.oosterweelstemtest.be> (helping citizens of Antwerp choose for or against a mobility project in a city referendum).
- the person agrees with the party’s stances and promises
for the next term (prospective);
- he or she likes certain characteristics of the party leader;
- his or her parents always supported the party;
- the person is close to the ideology of the party;
- he or she is happy with the way the politicians of the
party acted in the previous legislature (retrospective).
A VAA tries to map and tap one or more of these reasons to vote for a party. Each of these reasons can be operationalized in one or more questions. For example, a
VAA may ask what the user’s parents voted or what party
he or she normally votes for and can base the party profile
(partially) on this answer. An existing example is the Dutch
Kieskompas that asks for both the agreement on issues for
the next elections, the evaluation of the parties’ work during the previous legislature and whether the user considers
the party leaders as a good possible prime minister.
In DVT around 36 statements are presented. DVT only
incorporates the congruence of the voter with the parties
on concrete issues of the legislature to come. This has two
reasons. First, we believe this should be the most important
aspect of voting in a modern democracy. Parties present
programs and lists at competitive elections and get a mandate, or not, to carry out their program and put their ideas,
and thus the ideas of their voters, into practice (Klingemann et al., 1994). Second, we do not believe it should be
the goal of a VAA to take into account every possible motivation of users’ actual vote. We will elaborate that more in
the final part of this article.
For every statement the users can choose to agree or disagree. It is also possible to tick ‘no opinion’ for a statement.
When a user chooses ‘no opinion’ more than 18 out of the
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36 statements, no results are presented 3. After answering
the statements, the user can select the issues he or she finds
the most important. The way this question has been asked
has varied over time. In 2009 the question was: “Which of
the following issues do you find important? Please choose a
maximum of three issues”. The users can then choose between the issues that are relevant for election at stake.
DVT then produces a list of all parties in order of congruence with the user. Next to each party a graph shows
how much percent the user agrees with that party. No figure is given here, but the graph gives the user an idea of the
distance between his or her first and second, second and
third party, and so on.
When we say that ‘all parties are shown’ we touch one of
the hardest decisions we encounter every time we’re making a VAA. The Belgian political landscape is very much
fragmented counting eight different parties in the regional
Flemish parliament, but with many more fighting every
election for one or more seats in parliament. In 2009, nine
small parties entered the race; none of them got a seat. It is,
within our VAA system, not possible to create a reliable
party profile if we would have to differentiate 17 parties
with only 36 statements. Most of these parties do not even
have an (official) stance regarding most issue statements. So
we need to draw an arbitrary line between the parties that
are included in the system and those that are not . The rule
we implemented is that parties who have already a seat in
the national or regional parliament can enter, others cannot.
We realize that this makes our VAA a rather ‘conservative’
force in the election campaign.
3
With less than 18 answers, the user gets the message that the system
has too little information to calculate a valid result.
In the output screen, users have the possibility to take a
better look at their own position. Using the interest that
statements and the (sometimes surprising) results have generated, this page is aimed at informing the voter better. The
user can put his or her statement position next to the answers of any party and a few lines or argumentation of
every party why they adopted that stance. It is then visually
shown on which precise statements the differences are and
where they correspond with that party. Next to the answers, the party’s arguments are shown to better understand why the party thinks differently or similar than the
user. If one has second thoughts or is persuaded by the arguments of a party, one can change his or her answer and
recalculate the advice as many times as one likes.
6.2.2. The calculation
The most important way VAAs differ from one another
is by the calculation used to generate the political profile.
This part is often held back for users and scientific research
alike. As we pleaded before, we find it essential that the
way the calculation is done is fully transparent. We have
tried to make the system as good as possible without unnecessarily complicating it. We believe the more understandable and the more clear the algorithm is, the better.
We did not intend to develop a black box, creating the feeling for users that they cannot see what the system does,
and thus suggesting the possibility that the systems could
be manipulated.
Every user’s answer is compared to the answers of all
parties. For every answer where a party and a user agree
upon, a certain score is added to the total score of this
party for that user. At the end of the process all total scores
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of all parties are compared. The highest score belongs to
the party that is closest to the user’s political beliefs.
Next to this very simple mechanism, we also take into account the issue saliency for both the voter and the parties.
First, the score that is added depends upon the issue’s importance for the party. As will be explained further on in
the article, the scores are based on the relative amount of
party manifesto text the party devotes to a certain issue.
The greens pay, for example, a lot of attention to the environment in their party manifesto. So, if both the user and
the green party agree on a certain statement about the environment, the user gets a high(er) score for the greens.
Imagine that the social democrats also agree with the user
on the statement, but imagine them spending less attention
to environment in their party manifesto. The user will get a
lower added score for the social democrats. The maximum
score for the user on any party is one hundred. So, if you
agree with a party on all statements your score will be 100
for that party.
The salience of the issue for the user should also be taken
in account. The greens might find environmental issues as
essential, and the user might agree with them on a statement regarding the environment, but if this user does not
think the environment to be a particularly important issue
this congruence should not affect the total score for the
greens too much.. This is why we ask the user to point out
the most important issues for him or her. If the user does
not choose any issue, the scores stay untouched and are
unweighted. But if he or she chooses one or more issues as
being important an additional 20 points on top of the normal 100 are attributed.. This means that an extra 20 percent
of the score depends on the issue saliency on the voter’s
side. The twenty points are divided over the different issues
first. If one picks two issues, each one gets ten points extra.
Those points are again divided over the number of statements on those issues. So if one of those issues counts 3
statements, every statement of that issue gets an extra 3,3
points. These points are accorded to every party the user
agrees with on that statement.
6.3. Do the Vote Test. How it is made
6.3.1. First selection of statements
The bases of a VAA are its statements. The creation and
selection procedure of the statements is of the utmost importance. In DVT everything starts by grouping the competences of the government in several categories. Next, the
academic team gives a certain weight to the category. This
weight will later be used to decide how many statements
should be devoted to every policy domain (issue). This
makes sure that a relatively unimportant issue such as tourism doesn’t get several statements and that issues such as
environment or state reform that are important in the Belgian polity are not forgotten and get their share of statements
To create the statements the academic team organizes
several brainstorm sessions collecting as many statements
as possible. A team of political journalists of the public
broadcaster does the same from their point of view. Also,
all available party material is browsed through, looking for
relevant issues. A list of statements is collected per issue
(policy domain) and if we do not have enough statements
on an issue, specific domain experts are asked to provide
relevant statements.
When creating statements, several criteria are kept in
mind:
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- Diversity. Statements within one issue are made as diverse
as possible, covering the entire policy domain, not only
one aspect;
- Relevant issues. Another criterion for the statements is
that they need to capture relevant actual issues that are
currently being discussed or will need to or could be
dealt with in the coming legislature. We search for a mix
of long-lasting and new policy issues;
- Differentiating between parties. Statements on which all parties agree are not useful for a VAA. All statements comprise different stances of parties.
In several rounds several people work on the wording of
the statements. Here, a lot of attention is spent to possible
sources of measurement error such as double negation,
choosing simple over specialized words, avoiding doublebarrelled questions, and so on (Dillman, 2000). The wording is also tested in a dozen interviews with a diverse group
of people. Finally a language specialist checks for language
mistakes.
6.3.2. Party answers and arguments
For the collecting of the reference data (e.g., the answers
of the parties), we chose not to decide ourselves what position parties take on an issue, but to let them answer for
themselves. In the first years, this meant bringing all the
party leaders at a central location, giving them only a couple
of hours to answer the statements. In 2009, in contrast,
parties got several days to answer the statements. All parties
were also asked to motivate their stances with a maximum
of 150 words.
Based on the answers of the parties, statements on which
all parties agree or statements that get interpreted differently or wrongly by different parties are deleted. No difference between parties on issues can be politically relevant,
but it makes these statements useless for a VAA that tries
to differentiate parties. It’s interesting to note that journalists sometimes confronted politicians with the contradiction between their position on a statement and the fact that
their position has not been materialized in actual policy yet.
6.3.3. Weighing the statements
As we explained above, we want to take into account the
issue saliency on the side of the parties. There are different
possibilities to weigh the statements. VAA makers could
decide themselves what issues are important for a party or
let the parties decide for themselves. If a party could
choose their weights themselves, it would be pretty difficult
to check the weights and parties could try to manipulate the
system. Parties could give statements they believe to be
popular a higher weight than other issues. We therefore decided to base the weight factors on an objective source: the
party manifestoes. A couple of months before the launch
of the VAA, all parties are asked to send us their official
party manifesto. This meant every time the start of a long
and troublesome process to get a definitive version of parties’ manifestoes. Often journalists had to pressure these
parties to get their manifestoes in time.
When the first manifesto arrives, a few coders start coding the documents. Most of our coders are very experienced in coding manifestoes (also for other projects) and
thus inter-coder reliability is high. The codebooks that are
used are based on a very detailed codebook used in international and Belgian agenda-setting projects. Every sentence
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ended by a point, double point or point comma, gets one
issue code. In 2004, for example, when both European and
regional party manifestoes were coded, 673 manifesto
pages were coded, adding up to 18.228 codes.
The detailed codes are then collapsed in around twenty
master categories. A percentage of sentences about an issue
is calculated per party, giving us the weight of that issue for
that party. Almost every issue is covered by more than one
statement in the system. The total weight of a statement is
calculated by dividing the weight of the issue by the number of statements on that issue. Every statement can be
linked to up to two issues.
6.3.4. The calibration or the final selection of statements
A unique aspect of DVT is the way the final system is
calibrated. More than double the number of statements
needed for the final VAA are formulated and answered by
the parties. The final selection of 36 statements is based on
empirical data.
All statements are put in a population survey on a random sample of thousand Belgian voters via CATI. The issue salience question is also added. These representative respondents are actually participating in an extra large VAA,
but without the party profile as a result. Next to the statements, the respondents of the questionnaire are asked to
give their past voting behaviour (what party did you vote
for on the last elections) and their future voting intention
(if the elections were held today, what party would you vote
for).
Especially for that purpose we have designed a software
that simulates several VAAs (e.g., different questionnaires
made up by different combinations of statements) for these
1000 respondents. Trying different combinations of state-
ments within certain theoretical boundaries, the computer
program looks for the best selection of statements. In a recent paper Walgrave et al. (2009) showed, based on a simulation of 500.000 configurations of 36 statements, that the
selection of statements has a considerable impact on the
‘vote advices’ that are produced. The population data helps
us to consciously make our final selection.
If one wants to select the ‘best’ selection of statements,
one needs to define what ‘best’ means. We have operationalized the best selection in two ways. First, we measure the
congruence on the individual level between people’s future
vote and advices’ top-three given to that user per party; this
leads to a percentage of ‘correct’ advices per party. The average of these percentages should be as high as possible,
and the standard deviation as low as possible. So, for us the
best VAA does not only have the largest average congruence between advices and future voting intention: the variance between parties should also be as low as possible.
Second, we screen the distance between the aggregated voting advices and the aggregated electoral result of the future
voting intention. The question here is: If all voters would
vote for the party the VAA tells them to vote for, what
would the election outcome be and what is the (average)
distance to the normal election outcome?
Before starting to select the final combination of 36 out
of 70 statements, we first need to limit the number of possible combinations. On the one hand this has a simple
technical reason: testing every combination would take
days, if not weeks to calculate as there are billions of possible combinations. On the other hand, a purely mathematically good set of statements can make a horrible VAA. If,
for example, almost all statements concern the environment, only short term issues are picked or several statements that are very alike, the VAA will be seen as a failure
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even if it has a high congruence with future voting intention. Here follows a short overview of the criteria our software takes into account:
- The most important way to limit the number of combinations is by picking by hand a number of statements
that are critical for the VAA and that will be incorporated anyway. Around 30 statements are pinned down.
So the program only has to select 6 statements out of
40.
- Sometimes, two similar statements are created concerning the same issue because we are trying two different
wordings or are looking for the right formulation or aspect to differentiate the parties on. To make sure they
do not both end up in the VAA, some ‘impossible couples’ of statements are marked that can never be combined in one VAA.
- Minimum and maximum amount of statements per issue. For every issue a minimum number of statements is
determined to make sure all issues are present in the
VAA.
- Balance between ‘left’ and ‘right’ statements. All statements are put in the category: left, right or neutral. A
‘left’ statement is a statement which frames an issue in a
left way, suggesting a left-wing (progressive) solution. A
selection with a strong imbalance between left and right
will not be calculated.
Because of the way the weights of the statements are calculated the impact of throwing out one statement and replacing it by another is very hard to predict. These complex
interaction effects make the help of the computer essential.
This process of selection has been automated to a very
large extent, but it still asks for human help to make a final
selection as there are too many factors to take in account
that determine the final choice. The best selection of statements is then, together with the final weights, exported and
used in the VAA.
6.4. Discussion. VAA: Advice, aid or toy?
As the popularity and the amount of VAAs in Belgium
and the rest of Europe have risen quite spectacularly, we’ve
seen three fundamental different approaches. We want to
use this discussion part to sketch the three approaches and
to explain why we choose for our approach. This approach
has consequences for the way a VAA is constructed and
conceived.
For some a VAA is nothing more or less than a toy. A
toy is something you do for fun and sometimes you might
learn something from playing with a toy. As a reaction on
the success of the Stemwijzer in the Netherlands a few toy
VAAs were launched. We provide an example below (see
figure 6.1).
When it’s clear to the user that it is set up as a toy, this
type of VAA obviously does not hurt anybody. But when a
VAA is considered a serious application, we believe it
comes with the responsibility to do much more than amuse
the voter.. This is even truer when academics lend their
name and title to such an application, giving it even more
credibility. As Ladner et al. (Chapter 5 in this volume)
rightly pointed out, the responsibility only counts when
VAAs have impact on the voters. If voters see every VAA
as a toy and do not take it seriously, why bother?
Only a small number of studies have gathered data on the
impact of VAAs. To make influence possible in the first
place, people need to be exposed to the VAA. It is clear
from several cases all over Europe that this exposure has
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been growing very fast in the last years. Earlier on we described the Belgian case with more than one million uses in
a single election campaign. But exposure to a VAA does
not mean it has influence on the voters. The available studies show that DVT has indeed affected Belgian voters’ final
decision but at the same time these effects were very modest (Walgrave et al., 2008a; 2008b).
Figure 4.1 – Screenshot of the StomWijzer, a 'toy VAA'
Note: Users have the choice to react on the picture of a cow with:
"Nice cow" or "Nice! Food"
We have recently gathered new data confirming these
previous conclusions. In the period before the regional
elections of 2009 the Belgian Elections Survey was conducted. It is a panel study, with two waves of pre-electoral
questions and one post-electoral wave. This research design
allows us to investigate electoral behaviour among the Belgian population in the most reliable manner (for full methodological details, see: Hooghe et al., 2009). The research
team asked in every wave for the reason the respondents
choose a specific party in an open ended question. The
number of people mentioning a VAA grows as the election
gets closer but it stays small compared to other factors.
Table 5.1 – “Why would you vote for this party?”
VAA
Wave 1
Wave 2
Postelectoral
0.9%
1.1%
1.6%
Note: Open ended question; figures refer to the percentage of respondents spontaneously referring to a VAA
Although the impact seems relatively low, if more than
one voter out of every hundred spontaneously refers to a
VAA as his or her reason to vote for a party, we believe the
makers should take it seriously.
If taken seriously, a VAA can still be approached in two
ways: as a tool giving a concrete ‘advice’ to the voter on
what he or she should vote based on his or her own preferences and attitudes or as an ‘aid’, helping him or her make a
choice and providing information.
The acronym VAA was launched by the authors of this
article as short for Voting Advice Application. Throughout
the making of different VAAs we have come to the conclusion that we would like to change the meaning of VAA to a
Voting Aid Application. It might seem like an unimportant
what’s-in–a-word-discussion, but we believe it adds an important nuance.
We have learned through time and experience that there
is no such thing as the correct VAA system. For example,
we showed that the choice of the statements has a clear influence on the advices the system produces (Walgrave et al.,
2009). VAA designers make inevitably subjective choices
leading to different results. The combination of this with
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the impact as described above, should us make more modest. The ‘advice’ to vote for a certain party should therefore
better be interpreted as a party profile (consisting out of several parties on top of a list) based on a certain (important)
aspect of a voter’s world. Triggered by the statements and
the application, less interested citizens may become more
interested and inform themselves a little better before going
to vote. The application should therefore contain as much
extra information on the parties, their stances and the
user’s position as possible. This also means the way the system works should be totally transparent – something we
have been trying to do in this article.
Most VAAs are obviously a combination of these three
approaches: they are fun to do (toy), give a lot of information (aid) and try to give the best advice possible (advice).
But most of the time the creators have chosen implicitly for
a main approach. We believe that the best approach, based
on the impact and the vulnerability of a VAA, is that of trying to help people vote as informed as possible. Not by
saying what party they should vote on, not by trying to take
into account all aspects of their vote, but by informing
them on some aspects only and trying to bring a little order
in the electoral chaos.
Chapter Seven
Mapping the Political Landscape: A Vote Advice
Application in Portugal
MARINA COSTA LOBO, MAARTEN VINK, MARCO LISI
On Sunday, 27 September 2009, Portugal held general
elections for the Assembleia da República, the unicameral national parliament. The ruling Socialist Party (PS – Partido Socialista) lost half a million votes compared to 2005, polling
37 per cent of the vote and winning 97 of the 230 seats in
Parliament. As a result of these elections, the PS lost its absolute majority – the first in the party’s history – and was
forced into an uncomfortable minority government. The
electoral results saw a considerable fragmentation of the
vote (see Table 7.1). The elections were held at the end of a
few difficult years in Portugal, both from an economic and
a political perspective. Indeed, the Socialist mandate (20052009) was marked by economic crisis and political scandals
affecting especially major political figures in the country,
belonging to the major parties. In the run-up to the election
there were considerable doubts that the socialists would be
able to win another absolute majority, with polls showing
that this was increasingly unlikely. Thus, party’s issue positions became quite important as they may signal coalition
potential. Polls also showed that around twenty per cent of
voters were unsure who they would vote for. This was not
particularly surprising since in the 2005 (anticipated) elections, according to post-electoral surveys, more than one
third of the electorate decided their vote during the campaign. This phenomenon reflects to a large extent the weak
partisan loyalties of Portuguese voters. In fact, party identi-
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Marina Costa Lobo - Maarten Vink - Marco Lisi
fication is relatively low when compared to other European
democracies and the trend has shown a steady decrease
over last decades (Freire, 2006a).
Table 7.1 – Legislative Elections in Portugal: Results from 2005-2009
2005
BE
CDU
PS
PSD
CDS-PP
Others
Null Votes
Total
Votes
365,000
433,000
2,590,000
1,654,000
416,000
122,000
170,000
5,750,000
%
6.35
7.54
45.03
28.77
7.24
2.13
2.96
100
2009
Seats
8
14
121
75
12
0
230
Votes
558,000
447,000
2,078,000
1,655,000
593,000
176,000
177,000
5,684,000
%
9.81
7.86
36.56
29.11
10.43
3.1
3.11
99,98
Seats
16
15
97
81
21
0
230
Source: <http://www.legislativas2009.mj.pt>
Thus, the political landscape of 2009 was particularly
volatile. The evident majoritarian turn which Portugal underwent from 1987 onwards, with the progressive concentration of the vote was under threat since at least 2005
(Lobo, 2009). The 2009 elections confirmed the strengthening of the smaller parties, and the decline of the PS and
the centre-right PSD (Partido Social Democrata), the two centrist parties which have alternated in government for almost
two decades in Portugal. Thus, whereas these two parties
polled respectively 78 and 74 per cent in 2002 and 2005, in
2009 they only managed to gain 66 per cent of the vote.
This electoral change, pre-announced in the periodic surveys before the election, and subsequently confirmed in the
election results signals meant that a Vote Advice Application (VAA) would be particularly important in the context
Chapter Seven - Mapping the Political Landscape: a VAA in Portugal
of the 2009 electoral choices presented to the Portuguese.
Not only that, but the abstention trends, coupled with the
growing dissatisfaction with politics which exists in the
country (Freire and Magalhães, 2003) meant that such an
Application might contribute to mobilise voters who are
relatively unanchored. Moreover, it should be noted that
the political landscape displayed an increasing complexity
due to the formation of some new political parties which
run for the first time in the 2009 European elections.
A Vote Advice Application was thus developed for Portugal by the authors of this chapter in cooperation with Kieskompas BV, the specialized VAA enterprise directed by
political scientist André Krouwel of the Free University of
Amsterdam. The Portuguese ´electoral compass´ – Bússola
Eleitoral – was launched online on 20 August 2009, five
weeks before the general elections. It contained 28 questions that users could answer to and then compare their
ideological position with the position of 12 political parties
participating in the elections. By Election Day, more than
350 thousand visits to www.bussolaeleitoral.pt were registered.
Of these, around 175 thousand consisted of active user sessions that lasted on average more than fifteen minutes. To
our best knowledge, this is the largest sample ever gathered
on political views in Portugal.
This chapter has three goals. First, we provide information about the development of the Bússola Eleitoral, particularly with regard to statement selection and calibration of
parties. Second, we discuss the extent to which the Bússola
presents a realistic picture of the Portuguese ideological
landscape. Third, we present descriptive statistics about the
users of the Bússola and conclude by discussing the extent
to which these data help us understand electoral behaviour
in Portugal. We start by briefly explaining the Portuguese
political landscape.
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7.1. Party system
During the democratic period, two centre and “catch-all”
parties have dominated the Portuguese political system at
both the electoral and governmental level: on the left, the
Socialist party (PS); on the right, the Social Democratic
Party (PSD). On the contrary, small parties have traditionally played a secondary role. While the Social Democratic
Centre – Popular Party (Centro Democrático Social – Partido
Popular – CDS) has shared several times government positions especially with the PSD, the Communist party (PCP –
Partido Comunista Português) – one of Europe’s last remaining
orthodox communist parties – has always lacked the legitimacy needed to form a coalition with the socialists, thus
remaining excluded from the national government. The
Renewal National Party (PRD), electorally successful after
its creation in 1985 by Ramalho Eanes, former President of
the Republic, failed to consolidate and virtually disappeared
after the second electoral contest. Since 1999, however, a
new radical left-wing and post-materialist party, the Left
Block (BE – Bloco de Esquerda), achieved parliamentary representation, and has seen a constant and steady electoral
growth.
Since 1987 the Portuguese party system has shifted from
consensual dynamics to “majoritarianism” (Lobo, 2001;
Magalhães, 2003; Jalali, 2007). This trend clearly emerges if
we observe the decreasing effective number of electoral
parties (ENEP) and the share of the vote gathered by small
parties. In this respect, 2009 marks a clear shift towards a
more “consensual” political system similar to the one that
characterized the first decade of the Portuguese democracy,
with a relatively low concentration of votes, high fragmentation and centrifugal tendencies. Thus, these elections contributed to change the trend toward a two-party system
displayed since 1987. Patterns of discontinuity with respect
to previous elections emerge if we observe some basic indicators related to the fragmentation of party system. On the
one hand, the ENEP in 2009 was 4.1 compared with 3.3
and 3.1 in 2005 and 2002, respectively (in terms of seats the
fragmentation raised from 2.6 to 3.1); on the other the concentration of the vote in the PS and the PSD was only 67
per cent in the 2009 elections, while during the second decade of Portuguese democracy the average was 77 per cent
of the vote (and 86 per cent in terms of seats). If the
change in party system format seems quite remarkable, the
formation of a new socialist minority government suggests
a change also in the dynamics of inter-party relationship.
From this perspective it is important to uncover the dimensionalities of the policy space in order to understand the
position of parties, as well as patterns of party interactions
and the recent dynamics of the Portuguese party system.
Perhaps the most used indicators of policy competition
are party positions along the left-right continuum. This dimension does not tell us what the main characteristics of
Portuguese policy space dimensionalities are. However, it
may represent a useful clue for examining the evolution of
party system dynamics over time, the formation of governments, and also for uncovering whether the ideological
differences among Portuguese parties have been blurred,
thus decreasing the complexity of the policy space or not.
According to voters’ perceptions, the placement of the
main parties on the left-right axis has remained substantially
stable throughout the democratic period (Table 7.2). If we
look at the degree of polarization, it is worth noting that
there is little change in the distance between both extreme
and the main parties. During the first decade it seems that
the movement for extreme parties is toward an increasing
radicalization, while the two moderate parties are perceived
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to have shifted slightly to more rightist positions. However,
since the 1990s the degree of polarization diminished or
remained stable, displaying in 2005 a position similar to the
one presented at the end of the 1970s. This finding is also
confirmed by data from both the Comparative Manifesto
Project and expert surveys (Laver and Hunt, 1992; Benoit
and Laver, 2006; Freire, 2006a). Nevertheless, it should be
noted that if we take into account the emergence of the
Left Block, a slight increase in the distance between the
more extreme parties took place in the more recent period.
Table 7.2 – Left-right positions of political parties in Portugal:
Voter perceptions, 1978-2005
Parties
1978
1985
1989
1993
1999
2002
2005
PCP
PS
PSD
CDS-PP
2.08
4.21
6.27
7.13
1.86
4.5
6.18
7.31
1.7
4.8
7.2
8.7
1.23
4.27
7.08
7.38
2.0
4.7
6.9
8.2
1.72
4.6
7.31
7.72
2.15
4.7
6.96
7.27
0.56
0.23
0.61
0.19
0.78
0.27
0.68
0.31
0.69
0.24
0.67
0.30
0.57
0.25
Polarization
Extreme parties
Main parties
Party polarization is calculated based on Sani and Sartori’s (1983) formula.
Source: Freire (2006b: 387); Lobo (2007: 91).
Overall, if we look at the relationship between the ideological dimension and party competition two aspects stand
out. The first is that the distance between the two main
parties is small when compared to other West European
countries (Freire, 2006a). The second is that the emergence
of the BE introduced greater complexity in party competition on the Left of the ideological spectrum. As we will see,
the BE also was responsible for introducing post-
materialist issues in the political agenda and new topics related to citizenship and individuals as, for example, gender
and sexual rights, racism and third world injustice.
A second and important source for understanding the
relevant themes for political parties in Portugal is the Comparative Manifesto Project. The methodology employed in
this project is based on the “salience theory”. The main
idea behind it is that parties will tend to highlight in their
party programs the issues which are most relevant to their
interests and their constituents. Topics are identified ex ante,
(see: Klingemann et al., 2006) and the coder then attributes
each phrase of the program to one of the topics. By adding
up the number of times one topic is discussed it is possible
to conclude which are the most salient issues for each
party. Also, given that many of the topics identified are
considered ideological, it is also possible to conclude on the
left-right positioning of parties. Table 7.3 summarizes the
topics which were most salient for Portuguese parties in the
two legislative elections prior to 2009 (the elections in 2002
and 2005).
Both in 2002 and 2005 there are great similarities in the
topics which parties choose to highlight. In 2002 and 2005,
the most salient issues for the five parliamentary parties are:
social justice, the expansion of social services and education, technology and infrastructure. Environmental protection, government efficiency, art/culture/sports/leisure, and
regulation of capitalism are the next most salient topics.
Together, these eight topics are the most prevalent for the
two elections and the party manifestos of the five parties
considered. Three of these eight topics are considered leftwing, namely education and social services expansion, and
the regulation of capitalism, whereas none of them is considered right-wing.
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Table 7.3 – Most salient topics for Portuguese parliamentary parties,
2002-2005: A summary
Topic
How often in
Top-10 most
salient topic?
How many parties cite topic?
2002
2005 TOTAL
Social Justice
2
5
5
Expansion of Education
2
4
5
Technology/Infrastructures
2
4
5
Expansion of social services
2
5
4
Government Efficiency
2
3
5
Environmental protection
2
3
5
Art, sports, culture, media
2
5
3
Regulation of Capitalism
2
3
4
Law and Order
2
3
1
Government effectiveness
2
3
1
Non-economic groups
1
3
Economic Objectives
1
3
Military: Positive
2
1
1
Trade Unions: Positive
1
2
Nationalizations
1
2
Incentives
1
2
Economic Orthodoxy
2
1
1
Agriculture
1
2
Democracy
1
2
Internationalism: positive
1
1
Decentralization
1
1
Productivity
1
1
Traditional mores: negative
1
1
Freedom & Human Rights
1
1
Source: Comparative Manifesto Project
(Klingemann et. al., 2001; Budge et.al,. 2006)
10
9
9
9
8
8
8
7
4
4
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
It is also interesting to note that the salience attributed to
these topics by parties is varied. In 2005, support for trade
unions and nationalizations are salient topics only for the
extreme-left BE and the Communists. Both in 2002 and in
2005 the PSD is the only party which gives salience to economic orthodoxy and productivity. The conservative CDS
introduces in both elections positive phrases on the military
and on law and order.
These findings indicate that, in line with the data in Table
7.2, the differences between parties are not very large in
Portugal (Freire, 2006a). The data on the manifestos show
that parties choose very similar topics to elaborate their
electoral programs. Moreover, some of these topics are positional, which suggest that there might be on certain issues
very important similarities between political parties. Even
so, it is clear that the salience attributed to the topics is not
identical, a first sign of potential differences between parties. This is a first indicator that there might be differences
between the parties, even though they may not be very
large. Having characterized the Portuguese party system, as
well as the political space in Portugal, we now turn to a discussion of the dimensions of political competition within
that space.
7.2. The Dimensions of Political Competition in Portugal
As several authors have noticed, the left-right dimension
can be considered as a “super-issue” which may include
different specific socio-economic policies across time and
space (Laver and Hunt, 1992; Benoit and Laver, 2007).
Thus, it is necessary to specify the main policy dimensions
of the Portuguese political system and their respective relevance over time.
Going beyond the overall left-right positioning of Portuguese parties on socio-economic issues, there is little consensus on the number of dimensions which characterize
best the Portuguese policy space and which is their relative
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salience. Laver and Hunt (1992) draws on an expert survey
to conclude that the policy space for Portuguese parties can
be captured by taking into account just one dimension, that
is, the Left-Right divide (Laver and Hunt, 1992: 52). Yet,
Huber and Inglehart (1995), using another expert survey,
contend that the Portuguese policy space can be better
characterized as two-dimensional, with the “traditional vs.
new culture” divide as the main issue dimension. This dimension refers to traditions, religious values, Catholic state,
ecological sensitivity, idealism, pacifism, secularism, participation, culture, environment, religion, moral order and social conservatism (Huber and Inglehart, 1995: 78). On the
other hand, Lijphart (1999) and Freire (2006b) argued that
in the Portuguese case policy competition is multidimensional and includes several components. Moreover, these
authors also argue that there has been little variation in the
main issue dimensions of policy competition, despite the
fact that their relative salience has varied over the democratic period. Thus, although the party space has remained
remarkably stable, there is disagreement on the main characteristics of issue domains.
What kind of dimensions then have been considered important beyond the left-right one? Regime support has
been considered an important issue for party competition
in the aftermath of the democratic transition. The conflict
between the parties that advocated the adoption of a liberal-western type of democracy (PS, PSD and CDS-PP)
and the extreme-left forces that defended a revolutionary
regime based on popular democracy determined the marginalization of the PCP and its anti-system role in the Portuguese party system (Bosco, 2001). According to several
authors (Gunther and Montero, 2001; Jalali 2007), this was
the main cleavage of the Portuguese party system, contributing to the lack of differentiation between the two main
parties. Yet, from the late 1980s onwards the communists
have begun to change their stances with regard to parliamentary democracy, making this cleavage less and less salient for party competition.
Considering both CMP data and expert surveys, it is relatively safe to claim that the main conflict between Portuguese parties concern socio-economic issues which have
remained salient and stable throughout the democratic period (Laver and Hunt, 1992; Klingemann et al., 2006; Benoit
and Laver, 2006). While left-wing parties have usually defended more interventionist policies in terms of public investments and expenditures, right-wing parties have supported entrepreneurial freedom and the importance of private role in providing essential social services. A recent
study based on the CMP data found that the economic and
social dimensions account for more than 70% of the variance with respect to the left-right positioning (Benoit and
Laver, 2007). The importance of these policies has been
also confirmed by Benoit and Laver’s study (2006) using
expert surveys. In fact, both dimensions reveal a high salience which significantly contributed to explain left-right
alignments. This means that, despite the centrist drive of
the socialist party, the difference between left and right is
still strong, and the economic and social dimensions significantly contribute to distinguish the Portuguese party
space (see: Bosco and Morlino, 2007 for a comparison of
the Portuguese case with other South European countries).
An important issue dimension that has proved to be significant, at least as far as voters’ behaviour is concerned
(Montero et al., 2008), is religion. Among traditional social
factors, this cleavage has usually been considered to have a
stronger impact than the class conflict, especially during the
first decade of Portuguese democracy when a deep polarization between liberal parties, on the one hand, and the
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154
radical left, on the other, took place. Since then, the religious cleavage has lost some of its significance, at least with
respect to party competition. Yet, moral issues still constitute an important dimension as the debates on the liberalization of abortion have shown. In 1998 and 2007 two referendums were held on this issue. The alignments of political parties opposed the two right-wing parties, advocating
pro-Church and traditional values, to the left parties which
defended the secularization of Portuguese society, with the
PS that shifted from an ambiguous position to a clear defence of legalization of abortion between the two referendums (Freire and Baum, 2003; Manuel and Tollefsen,
2008).
Foreign policy achieved a high salience in the first decade
of the Portuguese democracy, opposing liberal and moderate parties, on the one hand, to radical left-wing parties, on
the other. While the former prompted the integration of
Portugal within the Western bloc, the communists sympathized with the alternative bloc. Thus, this division substantially overlapped with the regime cleavage and its salience
has gradually faded away.
The issue related to the European integration is somewhat distinct from the foreign policy one. First, contrary to
the foreign policy dimension, some parties have shifted not
only in regard to their emphasis but also with respect to
their support toward the European integration. While the
salience of this issue has increased after the accession to the
EU, the politicization of this dimension has strengthened
its importance for party competition. In fact, beyond the
ideological opposition of the extreme Left, a strategic euroscepticism has taken place, especially with regard to the
CDS-PP (Lobo, 2007). Second, the BE has displayed a
somewhat different position from the PCP. While the
communists deeply criticize the integration process arguing
that it endangers the national interest and the national integrity through the implementation of a federal design at
the European level, the BE has defended the deepening of
European integration regarding social policies, favouring
the adoption at the European level of more protective policies especially with regard to economic and financing regulation. Moreover, contrary to the PCP, the BE supported
an internationalist project based on the differences among
European cultures and societies, opposing the tendency
towards homogenization and the centralization of decisionmaking procedures.
Another issue that may represent a new issue deals with
post-materialism. This dimension has traditionally displayed
a low salience in terms of voters’ alignments. In fact, public
opinion surveys reveal that only 10% of the population exhibits post-materialist values, less than the half of the average at the European level (Freire, 2003). Moreover, this
level seems to remain stable over the 1990s. Notwithstanding the low support of the electorate towards postmaterialist values, it should be noted that new issues and
demands have reached a considerable salience for party
competition (Freire, 2006b). As previously noticed, the BE
has contributed to emphasize the importance of moral and
non-economic issues.
Among the remaining dimensions considered by both Lijphart’s framework and the CMP data, the decentralization
is generally considered an irrelevant aspect for party competition, while the role played by environment policy is
somewhat more puzzling. According to Laver and Hunt’s
analysis (1992), the urban-rural cleavage may represent a
second dimension of the Portuguese policy space, beyond
economic and social issues. In fact, the PCP seems to be
placed near the right parties, leaving the PS as the only left
force to support a stronger centralization. As the same au-
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thors have noticed, this finding may be misleading because
it did not correspond to a clear ideological divide but it unveils strategic considerations with the main parties deeply
divided on this issue, as the 1998 referendum showed
(Freire and Baum, 2003).
The question whether environment policy may constitute
a relevant issue dimension is more controversial and depends to a great extent to the different sources used. According to Benoit and Laver (2007), this dimension significantly contributes to explain the left-right placement of
Portuguese parties, accounting for more than 20% of the
variance. However, if we compare the coding from the expert survey and the CMP it is striking that, while the former
reveals a strong correlation between environmental policies
and parties’ left-right positions, the CMP data shows no association between the two dimensions. This disagreement,
which refers not only to the Portuguese case but also to
other Western democracies, may be due to the salience assumed by this issue in the recent period – especially for left
parties – or to a measurement error in the CMP estimates.
This is a matter, however, that deserves more attention, especially when dealing with the 2009 Portuguese elections.
Overall, two points stand out when analysing the dimensionality of Portuguese policy space. The first is the limitation of policy dimensionalities. It is practically consensual
that economic and social issues represent the main dividing
lines among Portuguese parties. It is controversial, however, whether a second dimension can clearly constitute a
second axis for party competition. When comparing to
other advanced democracies, thus, the Portuguese case
seems to present a low degree of complexity. Several factors may account for this pattern. First, the conflict over
regime choice limited the strength of cleavage politics and
represented a “super-issue”, enclosing several overlapping
divisions. Second, the lack of parties’ strong roots within
civil society, as well as the weak anchoring of electoral support in social cleavages. Third, non-material dimensions
have displayed a low salience for both Portuguese voters
and party competition. Still, it is important to note that recently non-material dimensions have become increasingly
politicised. This is due to the fact that the majority Socialist
government used its mandate to (1) hold a referendum in
2007 on the decriminalisation of abortion which effectively
liberalised its access until 12 weeks of pregnancy; (2) liberalise divorce laws, making it easier for marriage to be dissolved; and (3) took a pledge on the legalisation of homosexual marriage including this topic in its 2009 electoral
programme.
The second point that is worth stressing deals with the
evolution of the policy space. There are strong evidences
that some of the dimensions which have traditionally distinguished Portuguese political parties have gradually lost
their salience, especially after the consolidation of the Portuguese democracy. These refer specifically to regime support and the religious cleavage. By the contrary, other dimensions have acquired more relevance, namely with respect to European integration and post-materialist issues.
The rise of a new actor, the BE, has contributed to attribute more salience to previously marginalized issues, while
introducing at the same time new issues in the political
agenda. Overall, a look at the issue salience over time
through the CMP data shows that as far as the stabilization
of the regime is assured, economy and regime support are
relatively less relevant for policy competition, while social
and environmental concerns began receiving more emphasis since 1987 onwards.
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7.3. Constructing the Bússola: Questions and Measurement
How do we then evolve from the dimensions of political
competition in Portugal to a voting advice application including 28 questions on the issues which dominate political
competition?
The Bússola team started by using the analysis above in
Portugal to determine the number of axes – essentially corresponding to dimensions of political space which we
would need to show the political landscape. From the discussion above there is clearly one main dimension of competition, which aggregates socio-economic issues, and
which is extremely central to political competition. The
other dimension, admittedly much less salient, incorporates
issues which conceptually do not fit in the traditional leftright axis, purporting instead to values on morals, on foreign policy and on the environment. A second axis was
thus conceived to aggregate the topics which Marks et. al.
(2006) have denominated as Green-Alternative-Libertarian
(GAL) vs. Traditional-Authority-Nationalist (TAN). This
GAL-TAN dimension includes the environment, attitudes
towards European integration, and all moral value issues
which have been politicized recently by the Socialist party.
Once those two axes were defined, the next step consisted of selecting the group of themes which were most
relevant for each of these axis/dimensions, based on the
previous discussion and analysis of what are the components of party competition. In each theme there are at least
two questions. The first axis incorporates the following
themes: Welfare State and Public Administration; Taxes
and Finance; and Economy. The second axis incorporates
the following themes: Life Styles and Ethics; Environment
and Society; and European Integration.
Having defined the relevant themes within the main dimensions, it was then necessary to design the questions.
This involved a careful study of way in which themes had
been politicised, namely through collaboration with journalists and opinion makers, as well as analysis of media statements and parliamentary debates in order to ascertain
which formulation would best capture both the differences
between the parties, as well as the importance for the public. In order to avoid bias, exactly half of the statements are
left-wing and half are right-wing, and this ideological balance was also kept within each theme, and within each axis.
We also took special care to include questions which relate
to issues “owned” by different parties, especially the
smaller ones. The choice of questions also had to reflect
the politics and policies of the previous four year parliamentary mandate, given that voting relies on retrospective
evaluations. This was indeed a long process of deliberation
that was necessary in order to ensure the greatest degree of
neutrality in the questions that were ultimately included in
the Bússola Eleitoral.
Table 7.4 provides a full list of all questions that were included in the application. On the left-right axis, several
questions refer to the role which the State should play in
several areas, namely education, health, social security,
regulation of prices. Important campaign issues such as the
importance of balancing public accounts, the need to lower
of taxes and to raise public investment in major public
works were also included. On the GAL-TAN axis there
were five questions relating to ethics, covering such topics
as abortion, divorce, homosexual marriage and the decriminalization of drugs. On the theme of “society and environment”, four questions deal with topics ranging from
the protection of the environment, immigration and issues
of law and order. Finally, there were several questions tap-
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160
ping attitudes towards the European Union, ranging from
the generalist to the particular, namely asking the respondent whether s/he was in favour of the Lisbon Treaty.
Table 7.4 – Twenty-eight question from the Bússola Eleitoral:
Issues and Dimensions
English
Dimension
Welfare State and Public Administration
The role of the private sector in the educational system
should be very limited
Left
Social security should be exclusively based on public funding Left
The sustainability of social security will require the increase
in retirement age for civil servants
Right
Private initiative should have a very limited role in health care Left
The modernization of the public administration depends on
the reduction of the number of civil servants
Right
Finances and Taxes
Taxes should be reduced to increase economic growth
Right
Public accounts can only be balanced by sacrificing important economic and social objectives
Left
The nationalization of banks should be a solution of last resort
Right
The battle against inequality requires a bigger contribution
from wealthy persons and companies
Left
In Portuguese society private initiative is not sufficiently
compensated
Right
Economy
Public-Private partnerships are a good way of funding public
investments
Right
In the current situation constructing great public works, such
as the TGV, is a good thing
Left
Markets should be deregulated as much as possible
Right
Economic growth depends on more flexible labour laws
Right
The government should directly regulate the price of basic
goods
Left
Life styles and Ethics
Decriminalization of abortion is a good thing
GAL
Marriage should remain a union between people of the oppoTAN
site sex
Decriminalization of soft drugs is a good thing
GAL
Divorce should be facilitated as much as possible
GAL
Single women should not have access to publicly financed
medically assisted procreation
TAN
Society and Environment
We should protect the environment, even at the cost of economic growth
GAL
Criminals should be punished more severely
TAN
Quotas for women in politics are essential to increase the
quality of democracy
GAL
In the current economic situation reducing quotas for immigrants is a good thing
TAN
European Integration
The European Union should have a greater say in more policy areas
GAL
Portugal would be better off outside the European Union
TAN
European integration is a good thing
GAL
The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, in its current form, is
essential for the future of the European Union
GAL
Once the questions were designed, it was then necessary
to position the political parties on each of them using a
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five-point scale ranging from “completely agree” to “completely disagree”. The first step was the choice of parties. In
principle, all parties running in the election should be present in the application, so that it could reflect accurately the
Portuguese political landscape. Questions of timing were
however also crucial. There were two parties which were
created shortly before the election, and these could not be
included.
For each party, information was collected from a number
of data sources, in a clear hierarchy. The most important
document was the election manifesto for 2009, followed by
transcripts from parliamentary debates during the previous
legislative mandate (2005-2009). Party platforms elaborated
for the latest party meeting were also considered. Moreover, the 2005 election manifesto was coded whenever it
was available. Finally, all other type of documents, namely
from party-websites, as well as media statements by leaders
were coded and placed last in the hierarchy of data sources.
Using all the information gathered, it was then possible to
position each party on each question. Next, all parties were
contacted and were asked to confirm that the calibration
was indeed the most appropriate. In the instances where
there was disagreement on the positioning of parties, the
Bússola team had discretion as to whether any changes were
made or not. New parties, running for the first time in a
legislative election were asked to provide statements which
would corroborate their positioning on issues.
Figure 7.1 – An ‘Electoral Compass’ of Portuguese Politics
Source: <http://www.bussolaeleitoral.pt>
This leads to the codification of twelve parties, across two
dimensions of political competition, six themes, and
twenty-eight questions which distinguish between political
parties in Portugal. Figure 7.1 presents a visualization of the
placement of these twelve parties on the two ideological
dimension and, when looking at the five parties represented
in parliament, clearly shows the three blocks of parties,
with the CDU and BE on the extreme left, in the upper left
quadrant; the PS left of the centre, also in the upper left
quadrant; and the PSD and CDS-PP on the centre-right, in
the lower-right quadrant. Apart from the marginal, but
longstanding communist party PCTP-MRPP, all the other
smaller parties are ideologically placed in the centre-right
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164
(MMS, MEP, PDA and MPT), or the extreme right (PNR
and PND).
7.4. The Bússola in use
The website of the Bússola Eleitoral was activated and
opened to the public via www.bussolaeleitoral.pt on Thursday 20 August. Our launching strategy was based on a twostep approach. First we announced the website in the blogosphere, via email, personal blogs, twitter and a dedicated
´cause´ page on Facebook in order to receive feedback
from more activist users of the internet with more specific
interest in online politics. This led to a use of around a
thousand users per day. We used blogs and twitter to clarify
a number of misconceptions around the vote advice application, for example with regard to coding and calibration.
In a second phase we sent out short media statements
and launched a campaign with our media partner SIC Noticias (´SIC News´), a commercial news channel with a
much-visited and well-maintained website. They broadcasted a short item on the Bússola throughout the day,
which was timed specifically in the first week after the end
of August holiday period and around three weeks ahead of
the elections. A short item was also announced on the main
page
of
the
website
of
SIC
Noticias
(<http://sic.sapo.pt/online/noticias>) as one of the five
most important news items of the day. This had a significant effect on the use of the Bússola, with around fifteen
thousand users alone on Wednesday 2 September. From
the media launch until election day, the website was visited
on average around six thousand times per day, with another
peak of around twelve thousand users on the Friday before
the elections, which took place on a Sunday (our statistics
show much higher activity on workdays vis-à-vis weekend
days). By Election Day around 175 thousand visits had
been registered. Visits to the website quickly dived below a
thousand per day to stabilize around five hundred per day,
signalling that vote advice applications do serve a purpose
as well even after have casted (or not) a vote. Figure 7.2
shows the development of the visits to the website from
the launch in August until a week after the elections.
So how does that Bússola work? When they visit the website, users of the Bússola are asked to respond to the twentyeight questions used to differentiate between the ideological
positions of political parties and to reply on a five-point
Likert scale. The answers from each user are subsequently
matched with the ‘answers’ of the parties (according to our
coding) and as a result the user is presented with information about his or her placement in the ideological landscape. It is possible to answer ‘no opinion’ for a specific
question, and if a user does so this question is left aside in
the calculation of his or her ideological position.
Figure 7.2 – Bússola Eleitoral: user statistics (20 August-7 October 2009)
200.000
Cumulative
Per day
180.000
160.000
140.000
120.000
100.000
80.000
60.000
40.000
media launch
20.000
election day
0
1
2
3
4
5
Week
6
7
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166
Beyond issue statements, the user had the possibility to
answer two optional questions. The first was related to the
“feeling thermometer” which asked users to rate their hostility/favourability toward party leaders on a 11-point scale.
The second optional question dealt with vote propensity,
by adopting the standard formulation (“how probable it is
that you will vote for the following parties?”). It should be
noted that this question was set before the final results and
had no influence on the calculation of party-user proximity
or agreement scores.
The Bússola Eleitoral generates information about ideological position in relation to the twelve political parties in
two slightly different ways. First, after having answered the
set of twenty-eight question, each user is provided with a
visualization of her or his ideological position, as in Figure
7.1. The position of the user is indicated by the pencil in
the middle of the circle (the circle indicates the range of
parties that lie within one standard deviation of the user’s
position). The user can thus see which parties are closer
and which parties are further away from her or his ideological position.
Furthermore it should be noted that the ideological landscape is presented in an interactive format and that users
can click on specific parties to see how these parties have
answered (or rather, how we have coded them) on specific
issues. All the information that we used to code each position of each party on each question is also provided, for the
user’s information, and also by way of transparency of our
coding process.
The positioning of the elector – as well as that of parties
– on the interactive map is calculated in the following way:
it is the average positioning on the Likert scale (ranging from
-2 to +2) for each of the questions included in a particular
axis. The pencil in Figure 7.1 illustrates the position of the
average user (N=162.693). This position is virtually in the
centre, on the horizontal left-right axis (0,034 on a scale
from -2 to +2), and moderately ‘progressive’ (GAL) on the
vertical axis (0,37 on a scale from -2 to +2).
Table 7.5 – Proximity to party positions
Nearest party
Furthest party
Frequency
Percent
Frequency
Percent
PS
PSD
CDS-PP
CDU
BE
MEP
MMS
MPT
PCTP-MRPP
PDA
PND
PNR
Total
Missing
45,108
5,576
1,578
910
1,657
40,007
14,192
24,459
6,628
21,988
646
864
164,421
1,186
27.4
3.4
1.0
0.6
1.0
24.3
8.6
14.8
4.0
13.3
0.4
0.5
99.8
0.7
101
0
813
1,480
65,959
23
8
2
28
64
71,658
23,477
164,421
1,186
0.1
0.0
0.5
0.9
40.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
43.5
14.2
99.8
0.7
Total
164,799
100.0
164,799
100.0
When looking at the proximity of users to each of the
twelve parties, a descriptive analysis shows that the most
frequent ‘advices’ (or rather, the indication of proximity)
were towards the PS (27%) and the MEP (24%), a small
centrist party. On the other hand, the most frequently
noted ‘furthest’ parties were the PND (44%), on the right,
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168
and the BE (40%), on the left (see Table 7.5). It should be
noted, though, that these proximity scores were only calculated for the very nearest and the very furthest party, for
each user. We also designed the website in such a way that
these proximity scores were noted, but disappeared after a
few seconds in order for users to explore more substantially
their ideological relation to the different parties, on the different issues.
A second form of information about ideological position
is provided by the so-called ‘agreement’ scores. This measure is more useful, in terms of obtaining information not
only about the two nearest and furthest parties, but rather
obtaining a ranking of scores expressing the percentage of
agreement with each of the parties. These scores, in a way,
provide a more accurate picture of the ideological relation
to the twelve parties, as they are not based on average ideological position on each of the two axes (as is the case for
the proximity scores), but rather on the average agreement
based on all of the twenty-eight questions. These scores are
more accurate because, hypothetically, it could well be the
case that a user occupies the same position on both of the
axes, as one of the parties, but that this proximity is based
on agreement and disagreement with different statements
from the questionnaire.
When we look at the available user data, we see –
interestingly – that the four parties to which users ideologically relate most closely, in terms of agreement on important political issues, are four small parties that did not gain
enough votes to be represented in parliament (see Table
7.6). Of these four, the MEP gained most votes (25.475),
which in the Portuguese moderately disproportional system
is not enough to win one of the 230 seats in Parliament,
unless every single vote is concentrated in the same electoral district. Secondly, when looking at the five main par-
ties, the PSD, PS and CDS-PP are all relatively close to
each other, in terms of agreement score, whereas for BE
and CDU the average agreement scores are significantly
lower, and not surprisingly relatively similar. These results,
in combination with the results of the election (see Table
7.1), underscore the relative antagonistic character of the
current Portuguese political climate, with a strong polarization between the left of the BE and CDU and the right of
the PSD and CDS-PP, with the PS in an awkward position
in between these two blocks.
Table 7.6 – Agreement scores (average for twenty-eight questions)
Agreement with MMS
Agreement with MEP
Agreement with MPT
Agreement with PDA
Agreement with PSD
Agreement with PS
Agreement with CDS-PP
Agreement with PNR
Agreement with BE
Agreement with CDU
Agreement with PND
Agreement with PCTP-MRPP
Valid N (listwise)
Mean
Std. Deviation
70.50
66.37
65.71
64.59
64.31
63.43
62.41
58.33
57.12
54.12
52.20
51.96
6.49
7.15
7.07
7.58
8.56
8.21
9.31
8.23
9.61
9.39
8.84
8.01
163,453
7.5. Discussion
Vote advice applications are devised to inform voters
about ideological differences between parties and about
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170
their own position in the ideological landscape. Voters are
not supposed to follow, certainly not mechanistically, the
‘advice’ of these tools and we would expect them to have a
healthy distrust of any tool which tells them how to vote.
Having said this, vote advice applications such as the Portuguese Bússola Eleitoral can be useful to provide clear programmatic information about party positions as a basis for
a well-informed vote.
In the Portuguese case, this is particularly important for
several reasons: firstly, because parties tend to be relatively
centrist, even comparatively (Morlino and Bosco, 2007),
and media opinion tends to give the impression that parties
do not differ in their stances towards policies. The Bússola
Eleitoral shows very convincingly a substantial range of issues where parties differ. Secondly, in times where vote abstention is on the rise (Lobo, 2009), and a large part of
non-voters are youngsters, we believe that the Bússola Eleitoral would be particularly relevant to contribute to political
discussion among the electorate’s younger cohorts which
are more prone to make use of the internet. Thirdly, the
proportion of individuals who claim not to have a party
identification is quite large, and thus it is plausible to think
that in such a context issue voting might be more important.
As previously seen, there is substantial disagreement with
regard to the dimensionality of Portuguese political space
and, more specifically, in terms of relevant policy issues.
The Bússola Eleitoral sheds more light on the main issues of
competition and it allows users to easily get information
about differences between parties for each topic. Whereas,
for example, the ideological differences among the main
parties are limited in the areas of environment and European integration, huge differences exist with respect to
public investments and gender rights. Moreover, one of the
main contributions of this tool was to offer an alternative
methodology for coding party positions which is sensitive
not only to the evolution of one’s country but also to the
specificities of issue campaigns.
With a vote advice application it is possible to give a
complex view of party positioning in Portugal on the basis
of a large database of relevant statements from electoral
manifestoes, parliamentary debates and other sources. This
is a useful tool in order to understand the evolution of
party positioning over time. On the interpretation of user
data, it is advisable to be extra cautious given that its representativeness is not assured. Nevertheless, having said this,
a brief analysis of the user data shows that users were
mostly centrist, and moderately progressive, which is in line
with the results of the election where the two centrist parties won 66 per cent of the vote, with the centre-left PS
staying the largest party (though losing its absolute majority).
The answers from the users of the Bússola, on vote probability and sympathy scores for leaders, also indicate that
users were very much centred on the five largest parties those already represented in parliament, and were not
tempted away from these dominant parties despite strategic
ideological positioning from some micro-parties in the core
ideological heartland between the PS and PSD. Future
analysis of the data is fundamental in order to explore better the links between electors and parties, and the degree to
which the latter represent the former’s political preferences.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
wahlkabine.at: Promoting an Enlightened
Understanding of Politics
CHRISTINE MAYER, MARTIN WASSERMAIR
Even though Jean-Jacques Rousseau promoted categorical principles of participation and inclusion, he remained
sceptical as to whether members of a republican society
could actually be regarded as citizens. In his most important work, The Social Contract, however, the French 18th century philosopher described the importance of a legitimate
political order and of legal institutions. Reframing these
early ideas of republican government into today’s realities,
it makes sense to identify the characteristics that, according
to Robert A. Dahl, a polity must achieve in order to qualify
as democratic: effective participation, equality in voting, exercising final control over the agenda and, last but not least,
gaining enlightened understanding.
There is no doubt that Austria has to be considered a
young democracy. Robert Dahl’s point about “enlightened
understanding” is therefore of particular relevance: the
people must know enough about what is going on and have
access to uncensored sources of information, so that they
know how to participate in their own best interest (Dahl,
2005). We all know that TV, newspapers, and magazines
are societal players who exert considerable influence on
public opinion. We are also well aware that the so-called
mainstream media frequently does not facilitate enlightened
understanding, as news coverage in pre-election times tends
to focus on a candidate’s personality instead of their policies. It is therefore the questionable quality of the informa-
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Christine Mayer - Martin Wassermair
tion that impedes citizens who want to take their role as responsible citizens seriously, and not so much an overwhelming inundation with data that is often referred to as
the curse of the Information Age. As a result, voters often
have difficulty determining a party’s position, which can be
identified as one of the reasons for an alleged “discontent
with politics” – and politicians.
On the other hand, wahlkabine.at, Austria’s most successful voting indicator and political orientation tool, provides
clear information. It lists questions about topical issues in
regional or national politics, gives access to all the answers
and comments given by the contending parties, and a comprehensive glossary, which is regularly updated and expanded, provides background information about topical issues. Additional information comes in the form of interviews with politicians, texts, or teaching materials that can
be used at schools. In a paper on e-democracy and online
voting assistance tools, Fivaz and Schwarz (2007) argue that
such tools can “enhance and strengthen fundamental democratic principles like political participation, transparency
and accountability”.
Needless to say, vote match tools do not, cannot, and
should not serve as substitutes for independent reflection
and responsible decision making, as wahlkabine.at points out
repeatedly. This statement can be found on the website as
well as in the course of the online tool. The site does not
consider itself a “voting advisor" so much as a "political
orientation tool”: it refrains from telling users who to vote
for, and draws attention to the fact that 25 questions online
should not be taken as the sole basis for a voting decision,
as many other parameters have to be taken into consideration.
Neither does wahlkabine.at serve as a suitable tool to examine political commitments or party memberships. Yet
Chapter Eight - wahlkabine.at
this is precisely the point where the project has met with
the suspicion of political parties. In the most severe instances, there were threats of litigation or funding cuts –
clearly attempts of censoring a tool committed to maintaining its independence vis-à-vis political interest groups.
So what does wahlkabine.at do? First and foremost, it tries
to raise awareness for political issues and offers guidance
concerning party policies on current issues. And what is
more, it is fun. The majority of users who send feedback or
have been interviewed state that they were interested in
wahlkabine.at because they perceived it as a “fun gadget”.
They were “curious” to see whether their results would reflect their actual voting behaviour, and it was a “game” for
them. The guiding idea behind the project was to create a
cool tool capable of awakening an interest in political content,
to make political positions visible, and to promote reflection and debate. So far, wahlkabine.at has fulfilled this goal –
and has shown that the buzz phrase “disenchantment with
politics” cannot always be easily applied to voters just because they decide to abstain from voting.
Declining voter turnouts and a seemingly low interest in
politics are a serious problem for democracies worldwide.
As Monika Mokre, president of the Austrian Society of Political Science until 2009 and researcher at the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, states,
“the buzz phrase ‘disenchantment with politics’ is often used
to denote that voters are not interested in the intricate workings of politics. By defining the problem as a general mental
condition of the citizens, it is, at the same time, removed
from the realm of political responsibility. Parties contesting
in elections adapt to the (assumed) wishes of the voters by
increasing personalization and by adopting commercial marketing strategies. Frequently, these forms of mediating politics are taken up and re-enforced by popular media. In addition, ever increasing numbers of opinion polls and quizzes
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about the outcome of the elections contribute but little to
evoking genuine interest in the voters, for the central task lies
in politicizing voting decisions, i.e. in linking them to political
contents. This goal cannot be reached by expecting citizens
to search for a particular party position in its platforms,
manifestos, and advertising brochures. Instead, easily accessible and attractive new instruments must be developed to
disseminate information before elections” 1.
She identifies wahlkabine.at as an instrument that catches
the attention even of people who would not normally consult magazines or websites about politics, the tool’s main
attraction being that it can be perceived as a “game” that
nevertheless yields interesting results.
On an English language website, wahlkabine.at has been
described as “an Austrian voter education project [which]
aims to increase political participation and voter turnout in
local, parliamentary and European Parliament elections in
Austria” 2. But however great the success of wahlkabine.at in
the pre-election period, its function and significance (e.g.,
with regard to increasing voter turnout) still need to be
properly assessed.
A Council of Europe report on e-democracy states that
the “electronic monitoring of parliamentarians can...be organised by civil society, which collects information on parliamentarians’ activities and performances and makes this
information available to the public electronically” and cites
wahlkabine.at as an example. Although wahlkabine.at is, of
course, no such MP watch website, the similarities of MP
watch sites and vote match tools are nevertheless vital. The
report goes on to say that one may expect that “MP watch
websites...once they are well established in the political
Mokre, Monika. <http://wahlkabine.at/oegpw_statement2008>
<http://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=2009052610252575>
1
2
landscape...will be followed by the citizen’s right to recall
their representatives” 3. This assessment implies that such
websites may serve as tools which do not only make politics and policies more transparent. What is more, they
might eventually develop into tools used by the public to
make politicians more accountable for their decisions. Or,
as one user put it in his feedback email to wahlkabine.at,
“It is refreshing to see how the Internet seemingly effortlessly overcomes these obstacles and gives us a view of the
future of politics (or so I hope)! It is easy to imagine that future elections could be held like this – just imagine if for
once the contesting parties were suddenly required to concentrate on issue-related politics!” 4
8.1. Historical overview
In the fall of 2002, the Vienna-based Institute for New
Culture Technologies/t0 decided to contribute an online
project called wahlkabine.at (“polling booth”) to the upcoming Austrian parliamentary elections. Although the decision
seemed spontaneous, it was actually based on solid motivations. After many years of work on the interface between
art and culture and information and communication technologies, one of the most important insights concerned the
increasing commercialization of the Internet, which had led
to a more sober assessment of its emancipatory political
potential.
Against this background it became a priority to initiate a
project that would allow a playful engagement with the political content represented by the various political parties,
3
<http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/Working
Docs/Doc09/EDOC11810.htm>
4 Anonymous, Sun, 31 Aug 2008, 20:30:44.
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178
and would enable voters to identify their own political affinities. The initial challenge faced by a voting indicator tool
of this type in Austria consisted in finding suitable partner
organizations that would ensure an extensive reach as well
as a solid implementation, combining political science expertise with software programming. In the end,
wahlkabine.at was carried out by the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für
Politische Aufklärung, an NGO whose goal is the promotion
of democracy in Austrian society, as well as the Austrian
Society for Political Science. Nowadays, an additional partner organization is the Department of Political Science,
University of Innsbruck.
Developed by this group of civil society organisations and
university departments, wahlkabine.at was an immediate success and has continued to attract hundreds of thousands of
website visits. Since its inception in 2002, 68 million questions have been answered online and more than 2.5 million
users have finished the various questionnaires. In the runup to the most recent parliamentary elections in 2008, a
new record was established, when 23 million questions
were answered and 850.000 users completed the whole quiz
– a considerable achievement in a country of only 6.3 million eligible voters, making wahlkabine.at one of Europe’s
most popular online vote match tools. The project has so
far been carried out for the elections to the Austrian federal
parliament, as well as the parliaments of the nine provinces,
and elections to the European parliament. Additionally, one
non-election variant was offered during the Austrian EU
presidency in the first half of 2006.
In the process wahlkabine.at has been established as a
popular source of information independent from party affiliations or interest groups, which is considered trustworthy and reliable by voters trying to gather information and
form an opinion in the “pre-voting sphere”. It has in fact
become a staple of Austrian election times: voters blog
about their results 5 and comment on the questions or the
party’s answers 6; newspapers interview celebrities about filling in the questionnaire 7; many web pages and electronic
newsletters include the link, and some newspapers have
even been known to copy questions and answers for the
benefit of their readers. What is more, wahlkabine.at is often
accessed by pupils whose teachers use the questions as a
starting point for debating current political issues in class,
and who encourage their students to discuss similar questions with their friends, parents, and siblings. This tendency
has also been confirmed in feedback provided by families
indicating that the website had provided an important lead
for discussions on society and political views between parents and children.
Although the website is in German, the content also
seems to be of interest to English-speaking residents in
Austria or those who follow Austrian politics abroad.
wahlkabine.at questionnaires have in the past been painstakingly translated into English by various users and were
posted on blogs 8, in forums 9, or even on Wikipedia 10,
which points to the relevance of the project for people who
are interested in Austrian politics but do not understand
German well enough to navigate the wahlkabine.at home<http://forum.rotefalken-wien.at/index.php?topic=6.0>
<http://blog.bassena.org/2008/08/17/wahlkabineat-ist-wieder-damit-kleinen-patzern-und-ohne-fritz>
7 <http://wahlkabine.at/presse/sn020209/filedownload>
8
<http://www.peter-ould.net/2008/08/18/austria-how-would-youvote>
9
<http://www.uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=print
page;topic=78731.0>
10 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_legislative_election_issue_
questionnaires,_2008>
5
6
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180
page. This was one of the incentives to offer the project in
both German and English for the EU elections, “for those
internationalists that want to give it the Austrian try”, 11 as
one blogger put it.
The first opportunity towards an internationalisation of
the project arose in autumn 2008, when the tool was established in Italy – under the name of “wahlkabine.it/cabinaelettorale.it” – as a bilingual service for voters in the autonomous province of South Tyrol (Südtirol). In 2009, an Italian project for the elections to the European Parliament
was made possible in cooperation with the not-for-profit
organisation “Politica è Partecipazione” and the University
Sapienza in Rome. Besides, wahlkabine.at took part in the international
network
VoteMatch
Europe
(www.votematch.eu) with partner organisations from
eleven European countries. The goal of this pan-European
tool was “to promote European citizenship, to better inform citizens about elections for the European Parliament,
teach voters about the programmatic differences between
the contesting parties and to increase voter turnout” 12.
wahlkabine.at was particularly interested in this cooperation
as Austria has consistently shown a high degree of EU
scepticism in public opinion polls since its accession to the
European Union in 1995. The Eurobarometer 13 survey carried out by the European Union shows that Austria usually
ranks considerably, i.e. 10 to 15%, below EU average. Election turnout had decreased from 67.7% in 1996 to 42.4% in
2004 14, and as for the elections in June 2009, only 21% of
11
<http://elections.thinkaboutit.eu/2009/05/wahlkabine-a-decisionhelp-for-austrian-and-other-eu-voters>
12 <http://votematch.eu/the-project>
13 <http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/standard_en.htm>
14
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2004/ep-election/sites/
de/results1306/turnout_ep/turnout_table.html>
Austrians said that they would consider voting 15 (election
turnout eventually amounted to 46%) 16. Seen against this
background, it is important to note that in the same survey,
a majority of interviewees said they wanted more information about the European Union: only 41% of respondents
stated they knew how the EU worked, and 68% believed
that Austrians in general were not very well informed about
the EU 17.
It is all the more interesting to see, therefore, that Austrian politics have fallen short of fully acknowledging this
expression of citizens’ interest in political content and have
failed to promote it, despite the fact that a political orientation tool of this type is capable of fostering a broad public
interest in political questions and issues, and of promoting
political debates. This becomes readily evident if one takes
a closer look at the history and background of the project.
From the very beginning, the wahlkabine.at project sought to
reach a large audience and play an enlightening role in civic
education. Not only did the questions it contained highlight
political content that easily gets lost in increasingly noisy information environments, but the depiction of these political questions in the form of lists actually facilitated reflection as to which positions the various political parties actually occupied.
Feedback provided to the editorial team indicates that in
a number of users the tool has led to a heightened awareness of the actual content of political statements, and indeed, of any lack of clarity in political positions usually depicted in the media. The feedback feature – a link on the
start page of wahlkabine.at – allows interactive contact with
<http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,619028,00.html>
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europawahl_2009#Wahlergebnis>
17 <http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb68/eb68_at_
nat.pdf>
15
16
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182
the organizers. Thousands of users have made use of this
possibility, many of them acknowledging the support the
tool had provided in their arriving at an electoral decision.
In many instances, users have voiced their dissatisfaction
with a caste of politicians increasingly out of touch with the
needs and wishes of “ordinary people”, and with the severe
difficulties of orientation within the political system.
8.2. Method and Realisation
wahlkabine.at is first and foremost considered an interesting alternative to traditional mainstream media as it serves
as a quick guideline through party opinions and helps to
compare political views of the user with those of political
parties. Users fill in a questionnaire of approximately 25
questions. These answers are then compared with those
given by the parties contesting within the upcoming elections. At the end of the quiz, users can access a detailed
survey of all questions and answers as well as comments
given by the parties. As an additional feature, a glossary
provides background information about topical issues.
In detail, the three-month editorial process behind each
project can be described in four steps. First, a pool of
about 70-100 questions is developed by a team of experts
on politics, history, and journalism. Before elections on the
federal level (parliamentary and EU elections), this team
consists of representatives of the wahlkabine.at partner organisations, as well as journalists from various newspapers
and news magazines distributed across the country. In the
case of regional elections, journalists with a focus on regional and local issues are invited to take part in the editorial process.
Second, a list of about 40 questions is sent to political
parties (i.e. their executive boards) which are already repre-
sented in the Austrian parliament, in the parliaments of
Austria’s nine federal provinces, or the European Parliament. In order to make smaller parties aware of this opportunity to reach a wide audience, it is essential that parties
notify wahlkabine.at of their plans to run for office. Therefore, wahlkabine.at has recently introduced a “call for candidates” on its website. The parties answer the questions
(yes/ no; scale of importance graded 1-3) and also have the
opportunity to comment on their answers. All comments
are shown at the end of the online application, and can
later be accessed in an overview on the website.
Third, in a final editorial meeting the team selects about
25 questions to be included in the wahlkabine.at online version. Two criteria are paramount: topical relevance, and distinction between the party answers. Another focus is a selection of questions from a wide range of fields, such as art
and culture, economics, education, energy, environment,
family, food, gender politics, migration, religion, security,
social welfare, or traffic. The editorial team also checks
whether answers provided by the parties actually reflect
their party line in recent months, and changes positions
where deemed necessary.
Finally, wahlkabine.at goes online about six weeks before
the elections. Users answer about 25 questions by clicking
“yes” (agree), “no” (disagree) or “no answer” (neutral). In
addition, users have a range of nine grades to indicate
whether they consider the issue in question important or
not. The online tool then calculates which party’s answers
correspond most closely with the user’s answers. The other
parties are ranked accordingly and in descending order. By
pinning down parties to provide clear “yes” or “no” answers and to comment on questions, wahlkabine.at serves as
an essential information portal, not least by providing information on topics which may not even be included in
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party platforms and manifestos. wahlkabine.at does not only
provide a possibility to fill these information gaps; furthermore, all questions, answers, and comments are accessible
on the website for years to come. This collection of statements has in fact become an important resource on party
positions, and reflects their change over time. In spite of
constant lack of support and promotion by the Austrian
government, wahlkabine.at has thereby become a central
source of information since its first launch in 2002.
8.3. Open Source and Privacy
It is a guiding principle underlying the project that absolutely all the data concerning programming and computation must be entirely open: there is full information on the
project’s goals, its processes and methods, and the weightings applied; the parties’ positions are presented in brief
summaries. From the very beginning, the project has been
committed to the open source principle, according to
which the human-readable source code has to be freely accessible. This opens the possibility to view the code, to
modify and develop it, and to create a form of cooperation
directed primarily against the mechanisms of exclusion at
work in proprietary programs (where code is considered
“intellectual property” and zealously protected).
One the other hand, one increasingly important indicator
of the democratic quality of a society is privacy protection.
Even if the general awareness of the importance of privacy
leaves much to be desired, there seems to be a gradual
awakening to the risks posed by new information and
communication technologies. In the last decade, civil society organisations did not tire to draw attention to the restrictions on privacy which were imposed by governments,
giving rise to a critical movement that refuses to sacrifice
the most vital rights of the digital information age to a supposed fight against international terrorism.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the use of collected
user data has been a prominent question in wahlkabine.at – a
question addressed in many different ways. Although the
start page of wahlkabine.at contains a well visible statement
assuring users that none of their data will be forwarded to
third parties, scepticism seems to have won the upper hand
in some users. In fact, none of the results and IP addresses
(through which computers and servers could be identified)
of any of the users have ever been stored. Given the fact
that election campaigns are currently customized around
individuals’ personal data, it is not surprising that an independent political online orientation tool beyond the reach
of political parties generates nervousness. With this in
mind, the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0, an
uncompromising defender of privacy rights, and all the
other collaborating civil society and academic organizations, consider the protection of these rights as fundamental.
8.4. Conclusion
The unbroken popularity of wahlkabine.at certainly serves
as a powerful reminder that it is not the oft-quoted “disenchantment with politics” that ails Austria’s general public,
but rather a profound disillusionment with the political
caste, with the no-transparency of decision making, and the
lack of opportunities for participation. Seven years after
wahlkabine.at was first launched, interest in the project has
not waned. Quite on the contrary: by expanding into new
fields, like a tool developed for the elections to the Austrian
Federal Economic Chamber in 2010, by seeking international co-operation, and by offering a wide array of infor-
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186
mation about topical issues, wahlkabine.at still takes its role
seriously. In her essay, Monika Mokre states that
“democracy remains an empty term if those who are meant
to make political decisions, i.e. the people, are not adequately
informed on the issues they have to decide upon. By providing easily comprehensible information on relevant political
topics in the run-up to elections, wahlkabine.at thus provides a
central instrument of civic education” 18.
Conceived as a game, a diversion, a gimmick with the
very serious underlying ambition to whet the general public’s appetite for politics, wahlkabine.at will hopefully remain
a fixture in the election calendars of years to come.
18
Mokre, Monika. <http://wahlkabine.at/oegpw_statement2008>
CHAPTER NINE
cabina-elettorale.it
(Provides advice to Italian voters since 2009)
ROBERTO DE ROSA
Are Italian citizens really aware of party programs? To
what extent their voting behaviour depends on this awareness? Bellucci (2007) has pointed out that the rapid decline
of ideological polarization observed in the 1980s among the
Italian mass electorate is an important effect of the softened role played by ‘institutionalized traditions’ in determining electoral behaviour. Ideological identification and
traditions do not seem any longer the exclusive determinants of partisan choice, since the secularization of the
electorate has allowed other factors to intervene. The socalled ‘opinion vote’ (Parisi and Pasquino, 1977) in particular has increased in significance in the last decades, thus indicating the existence of more rational evaluations by the
voters when casting their ballots. However rational voting
behaviour presupposes, among other, the possession by the
electorate of a proper information with respect to the official positions of political parties on the issues.
As made clear throughout the preceding chapters, VAAs
help voters casting their vote by comparing the issue opinion of users with the political programmes of the parties. In
this sense, they provide rational issue voters with ‘proper
information’ about the issue position of parties. Aim of this
paper is to put forward some empirical evidence gathered
by the Italian VAA cabina-elettorale.it during the campaign
for the 2009 European election. This is the first Voting
Advice Application developed in Italy, and it was born
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Roberto De Rosa
from the collaboration between the Italian no-profit association Politica è Partecipazione, the Department of Political
Studies at the University of Rome “Sapienza”, and the Institut für Neue Kulturtechnologien based in Vienna. Our Austrian
partner provided us with the IT platform they employ in
their own wahlkabine.at, whereas we took care of adapting it
to the Italian context. The graphics and various features include those of Austrian original site wahlkabine.at.
The feedback of users have made us conclude that cabinaelettorale.it is not a regarded as mere toy – at least by those
who gave it a try – and that is thus likely to have an influence on both political awareness and voting decisions. It is
true that in European elections Italian citizens not only
vote for parties but also for particular candidates, and that
the voting recommendation of cabina-elettorale.it is based on
the political positions of political parties; nevertheless
cabina-elettorale.it turns out to be particularly helpful, being
Italian candidates nominated by party leaders and therefore
strictly committed to the political line of the party itself.
In this paper, methodology and realization will not be
discussed, being exactly the same employed in the making
of wahlkabine.at (see: Mayer and Wassermair in this volume).
Rather, we will concentrate on the impact that the tool had
on Italian users. Before presenting the data gathered
through a post-test survey administered to the tool’s users
in the days preceding the election, the recently reformed
electoral law to the European Parliament and the most important changes in the Italian party system will be briefly
outlined – so as to put the role of cabina-elettorale.it in perspective.
Chapter Nine - cabina-elettorale.it
9.1. Italian politics at the outset of 2009 European Parliament elections
Every European country is compelled to use the proportional representation system to designate its delegates to the
European Parliament, in line with common principles
adopted in 2002 on the basis of the Treaty of Amsterdam
in 1997. The current Italian law was amended on 20 February 2009. It still operates through the Hare-Niemeyer
method but it has been introduced a 4 percent threshold at
the national level. Each voter can express not more than
three preferences, according to the size of the constituency.
The Italian territory is divided into five such constituencies
with the only purpose of submitting nominations. Nonetheless, the distribution of seats is made in a National single
district. In this sense, parties remain the core actors of the
electoral process. Even though voters could base their vote
choice on the appeal of a particular candidate, the size of
the constituencies does not allow individual candidates to
affect the distribution of the seats. Accordingly, candidates
do not campaign for themselves more than they do for the
party they belong to. And what matters the most, candidates have no incentive to highlight personal issue stances
at the expense of those of the party.
The relevance of a tool like cabina-elettorale.it in such setting lies thus in the crucial importance of party actors in the
campaign, and it is further reinforced by the relatively ‘unknownness’ of the parties’ stands to the general public. The
Italian party system has deeply changed in recent years and
the transformations that have characterized it must still be
fully understood by the electorate at large. There are no
more long-tradition parties (as it was the case with Christian Democracy, or the Communist Party), whereas new
parties – and in particular the two main actors of today’s
politics: Popolo della Libertà and Partito Democratico – are still
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Roberto De Rosa
relatively novel to voters. For these reasons, we believe that
cabina-elettorale.it can bring an important added value to voters in a context dominated by parties whose programmatic
stands remain often obscure.
9.2. Tracing the VAA users’ profile
For the analysis in this section, data has been drawn from
an online survey conducted in the days before the 2009
European election (6-7 June 2009) among the users of
cabina-elettorale.it. In particular, users have been asked after
having played the test whether they wanted to answer some
additional questions for scientific purposes. Our sample is
thus formed by all the users who have deliberately chosen
to submit to the survey.
As known, however, Internet-based surveys are rather
contested from a methodological point of view (see: Marschall and Schmidt in this volume). The major opposition is
related to the problem of the sample representativeness, for
there is no assurance that a sample drawn by online surveying produces data which can be comprehensive beyond the
cluster of persons that were interviewed. Moreover, due to
the anonymity of online communication, there is almost no
control over who is truly filling out the questionnaire.
Nonetheless, there was a primary cause to use to use
web-based surveys in this particular research: in fact, the
questionnaire is aimed at VAA users only. The best (and
only) way to engage people who can estimate their experiences with VAAs is to get hold of them online just after
they have used the tool. In doing so, we admit that we were
not interested in creating a sample representative of the
Italian electorate; neither were we looking for a sample that
effectively reflects the composition of the online community. The first aim, in fact, is to trace only those who have
used the tool. As a result, the population target is a random
sample of the people using cabina-elettorale.it.
Differently from other studies however, we decided to
rely only on a small part of our sample (n=1006). To be
more precise, we decided to include in our analysis only the
respondents that have filled in the questionnaire in the period between June 5th (24 hours before the opening of the
polls) and June 7th (second and last election day). Bearing in
mind that a major problem with self-reported intentions is
their ability to last in time, and being the effects of VAA usage on political participation at the core of our research, we
decided to include in our analysis only those who used the
tool (and answered to the questionnaire) in the day preceding the election or during the election days themselves. If
VAA usage had a real effect on those who declared so, this
should particularly be the case with respect to the respondents we have chosen.
According to our data, people using cabina-elettorale.it is
rather young (see Table 9.1). About 43 percent are younger
than 30 years. There is a clearly over-representation of this
cluster of age in respect to the others and such a distribution does not match up with the demographic characteristics of the Italian society: those under 30 years in the Italian
population account only for approximately 20 percent. This
result is quite expected, in view of the fact that the age distribution within the online population does not match the
age distribution of the society at all. The cabina-elettorale.it
users do not completely match the distribution among the
online population either. The users of the cabina-elettorale.it
are on average younger than the average Internet user.
Within the online population, only about 21 percent are
younger than 30 years. Strongly underrepresented in the
cabina-elettorale.it community is the segment of people between 30 and 49 years (24%) which represent, on the con-
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Roberto De Rosa
trary, the majority of the Italian web population (45,5%).
Adequately represented are the classes of aged 50 years and
over: about twenty-seven percent in the cabina-elettorale.it
population – which is almost the same percentage in the
Italian online population.
Table 9.1 – Age groups, aged 14 and above (in percent)
Age (in years)
14-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59
6
43
13
11
13
Online population
9
20
18
24
13
General population
5
11
15
16
13
Source: <http://www.cabina-elettorale.it>; Istat (2008; 2009)
cabina-elettorale.it users
60+
14
12
26
Table 9.2 – Educational level
Baccalaureate or an academic degree
High school diploma
Middle school diploma
Still attending school
60%
31%
1%
8%
The average level of formal education background of the
analyzed sample is rather high: sixty percent of those using
cabina-elettorale.it is made up of persons with an academic
degree, while thirty-one percent are high school graduates
(some of which attending a baccalaureate degree); quite underrepresented are people with a basic formal education
only (see Table 9.2). It must be admitted that, on average,
Internet users have a higher formal educational background
than the Italian population on the whole (Istat, 2009).
Anyway, cabina-elettorale.it users have attained an even better
formal education than the average online population. Gen-
193
der is equally represented (55% male and 45% female) and
is in line with the internet population standards.
Probably as a consequence of their higher education level,
cabina-elettorale.it users show deep concerns in politics and
are comparatively more politically dynamic than the average
of Italian population (Table 9.3). About 60 percent of the
respondents consider themselves politically interested, and
the same percentage claims to frequently discuss political
questions. Moreover 42 percent admit to do both. People
declaring to be members of a political party are a little overrepresented in the sample (8%), while the participation in
civic voluntarism area is quite underestimate: in Italy the
percentage of citizens that claims are involved in social activities is about 9 percent (Istat, 2009), whereas in the
cabina-elettorale.it they reach about 5 percent.
Table 9.3 – Users’ political profile (percentage agreeing)
Interested in politics
Discuss often politics/policy issues
Well informed on European Union
59%
59%
21%
Member of a political party
Member of other political organization
8%
5%
Clear party preferences
“In next EU elections I will vote the same party I voted in national elections”
EU election as second level national election?
“My vote choice in EU elections will be influenced by national concerns”
26%
25%
Contrary to the second order theory (Reif and Schmidt,
1980), that postulates the vote at the European election to
be driven mostly by national concerns, our sample reveals
rather surprisingly that those casting a vote on the basis of
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Roberto De Rosa
national political concerns are not more than a fourth of
the respondents. In our opinion, this might be explained on
the ground that VAA users are comparatively more interested in (and knowledgeable of) political matters – therefore, more likely to cast their ballot on the basis of what is
actually at stake. What is more difficult to explain is the
high percentage of respondents not declaring to have already a clear party preference (74 percent) coupled with the
extremely low proportion of those declaring that might reconsider their vote choice due to their experience with the
tool (2 percent). It is a quite discouraging finding, for it
seems to imply that although many are looking for the right
party to vote for, only a very few find the ‘right party’
thanks to the tool. However, this finding should also be put
in perspective. As shown in the previous chapters, VAAs
needs time to be taken seriously by the general public, and
admittedly we could not expect better results being this the
first VAA experience in the country.
The percentage of respondents that argued that they will
go to the ballot remains in line with the participatory electoral tradition: 83 percent of the respondents declared that
they plan to go to vote. Only 6 percent claims that they will
not vote although they are by law entitled to vote. A posteriori, the participatory picture drawn by the cabina-elettorale.it
community will be way higher of the real turnout, whereas
in fact only 65 percent of the Italian electorate took advantage of their right to vote in the European election of 2009.
To sum up, the profile of the cabina-elettorale.it user seems
to be characterized as: young, highly educated, very interested in politics and keenly participating.
9.3. The impact on users: data analysis
What can we say with respect to the users’ reaction to the
test in terms of behaviour? Are our findings in line with the
trends expressed during the previous European elections in
2004? In order to answer these questions, we will compare
the results from our sample with those of VoteMatch
2004 1.
As to the first question, 40 percent of the Italian sample
declares that cabina-elettorale.it has raised attention on current
political and election campaign issues, and 34 percent has
found it helpful to understand the differences between the
political parties on the run (see Table 9.4). This result is
really indicative of the educational and information potential of such tools. Only 37 percent of the survey population
have had fun playing cabina-elettorale.it. When compared with
the results of the online survey from VoteMatch 2004, this
is a quite low value (see Table 9.4). An explanation of this
result could be detected in the fact that the political information in Italy has come to a saturation point and therefore
an instrument like cabina-elettorale.it is perceived more as a
technical instrument and is thus faced with greater seriousness rather than with a playful spirit.
More importantly, cabina-elettorale.it has been considered
useful by 19 percent of the sample in taking a vote decision,
whereas 16 percent of the respondents declare that it had
been useless. Furthermore, 46 percent of the respondents
claim that the vote advice will not have any consequences
in their voting decision. This sentence may prove that party
preferences of Italian VAA users are indeed vigorous – or
at least, more vigorous than they would seem.
VoteMatch 2004 is the first truly European VAA developed by the Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek. For more information, see <http://www.
votematch.eu>.
1
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Roberto De Rosa
Certainty cabina-elettorale.it shows to be a great instrument
of activation of information exchange on political issues: 41
percent of the sample admits that “will discuss the result
with others”, and 34 percent will recommend others to play
the test. Moreover, roughly one in five claims that (s)he
feels motivated to acquire further information on the election and political issues after having played the test. Very
low is the percentage of those declaring that they will eventually turnout thanks to the test, although they did not plan
to vote before (3%) – as low as the percentage of those declaring that they wish to change the voting choice following
the voting advice given by the VAA.
Overall, it would seem that cabina-elettorale.it had not a
great effect on its users, when compared with the results of
VoteMatch 2004 (see columns 2 and 3 in Table 9.4). However, as we explained above, VAAs needs time to be taken
seriously by the general public. Seen in this light, our findings represent a rather encouraging point of departure for
further efforts.
Table 9.4 – cabina.elettorale.it effects on users (in percent)
The voting advice will not have any influence
on my choice of vote
Will discuss the result of the test with others
Made aware of current political issues
Had fun!
Difference of parties are now clearer to me
Will recommend to use Cabina-elettorale.it
Motivated to inform myself further on politics
Motivated to vote
cabinaelettorale.it
2009
Votematch.eu
2004
46
-
41
40
37
34
34
21
3
72
44
94
48
47
8
Sources: <http://www.cabina-elettorale.it>, <http://www.votematch.eu>
9.4. Conclusions
The first thing that can be said about cabina-elettorale.it is
that, as every other VAA, it stimulates activities that go beyond the mere usage of an Internet-based test. We observed its effects on different forms of offline political participation: users talked about their results with others; some
of them were encouraged to look for further political information; and, although in a minor number of cases, they
were motivated to go to the polls even if they had not
planned to do so.
Internet activities are far from being sealed in a virtual dimension: there is indeed a real link between visiting political
websites and offline participation (Levinsen, 2004). The
first connection in this sequence refers to the peculiar
group of those using political websites. Our findings show
that the typical user of cabina-elettorale.it is neither an average
citizen nor an average Internet surfer. People using VAAs
correspond to the subdivision of highly politically active
citizens, with a high educational background too. cabinaelettorale.it users consider themselves interested in politics;
they are involved in political parties more than other citizens and claim to regularly participate in political discussions. As a result, many of those playing the tool were already politically active before using the VAA.
A second connection starts immediately after the users
have played the tool. People feels motivated to discuss their
result with others, thus activating new processes of information exchange on political issues and feeling motivated
to acquire further information on the election and political
issues.
At the moment we can detect a really small number of
people who were motivated by the tool (and only by the
tool) to take advantage of their right to vote. The applica-
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Roberto De Rosa
tion is relatively new to the Italian citizens and it is not as
well known as the German Wahl-O-Mat or the Dutch
StemWijzer, but future experiences with the tool may provide more interesting results in a time to come. Tools such
as cabina-elettorale.it may turn out to be ever more popular.
Voting advice applications have already demonstrated that
they can be important elements in pre-election periods. In
the future, these tools might probably reveal their entire
potential as shifting force on the political culture and democratic customs of a society.
CHAPTER TEN
Are the Voting Advice Applications
(VAAs) Telling the Truth?
Measuring VAAs' Quality.
Case Study from the Czech Republic.
MICHAL ŠKOP
Without many doubts, the Voting Advice Applications
(VAAs) are gaining popularity in recent years. It is
happening thanks to the technology, which is more and
more easily accessible. However, the question of their
quality is not very discussed (Walgrave et al., 2009 being one
of few exceptions). I would like to introduce and discuss
several quality criteria for VAAs, using two popular VAAs
from the Czech Republic to illustrate them.
10.1. Types of VAAs
The preparation and choice of the questions and the
acquisition of the parties' answers 1 are the crucial points
1
For the sake of simplicity, I am going to speak about a scenario, when
the VAA is prepared for parliamentary elections with different parties.
Obviously, this is not always a true. There may be any kind of elections
(for a city mayor, to a university body, etc.) and there may not be parties
(but individuals, etc.). Also, when I use the word “answer”, I usually
refer to the parties' answers, which are used to calculate the match with
the users' answers to VAA's questions. In some cases, the “answers” are
not real answers at all, they may be actually assessed by the authors or
by some experts, etc. But they have the same function in such a VAA as
answers have in other types of VAAs.
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Michal Škop
for any VAA. We may divide the VAAs into a few groups
depending on the way the questions and answers are
obtained, namely:
- “Vote-O-Mat method” (“VMm” in this text)
- VMm with questions answered by the political
parties (“VMPm”)
- VMm with questions answered by some experts
(“VMEm”)
- “Roll-call method” (“RCm”)
VMm: I call it after probably the biggest VAA so far, the
German Wahl-O-Mat. The questions are wholly invented by
the authors, possibly with a help of experts (e.g., political
scientist, journalists). A typical example of the question
may be: “Shall teachers get more money?” Most of the existing
VAAs use one of these two methods:
- VMPm: the questions are sent to the parties and they
send back the answers, which are used for the VAA.
This approach was used, among others, for VoteMatch.eu
in 2009, or it is used for StemWijzer.nl;
- VMEm: the opinion of the parties about the questions
is filled by some experts (usually political scientists).
This method was used, for example, for EuProfiler.eu in
2009.
RCm: The VAA's questions are based on real topics,
which have been voted in a parliament. The answers are
simply taken from the roll-call records. This method is used
in StemmenTracker.nl or the in majority of KohoVolit.eu's
VAAs. Obviously, this method depends on existence of the
roll-call data. If the data are not accessible, this method
Chapter Ten - Are the Voting Advice Applications Telling the Truth?
cannot be used. A typical question, to stress the difference
from the VMm, may be: “Would you have supported the bill
granting 8 % increase in teachers' salaries, which was voted in the
parliament on 29th Feb 2008?”
10.2. Quality of VAAs
The ideal VAA may be described easily – it should
suggest to a user the right party, which will best represent
him in the parliament during the forthcoming
parliamentary term. It should suggest the party which is
going to vote in the parliament as the user himself would
vote. Also, it should show him correctly how well all the
parties would represent him.
But measuring the quality of a VAA is rather a complex
issue. I am going to present one set of criteria to evaluate
it. These criteria are generally indirect. Obviously, this set
of criteria is not generally established, and other authors
may come with different ones. I concentrate only on the
structural criteria, thus I am not taking into account the
graphical design and similar features of VAAs in this study.
I divide the criteria into a few groups:
1) Calculation and Interpretation
1.A. Are the matches calculated in the best way?
1.B. Are the results reported correctly in a clear way?
2) Unbiasedness
2.A. Are the VAA's questions unbiased?
2.B. Are the VAA's answers unbiased?
3) Selection of parties, questions and answers (VAA's
structure)
3.A. Are all the relevant political parties included?
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Michal Škop
3.B. Are the VAA's questions relevant, are they going to be
decided?
3.C. Do the parties' answers reflect the truth?
3.D. Do the structure of questions model correctly the political
space?
The quality of the criteria from the first two groups (e.g.,
“Calculation and Interpretation” and “Unbiasedness”) may
be measured using polls or questionnaires. Unfortunately, I
did not have the resources needed to conduct such a study,
so I am not going to discuss these two parts. Regarding the
criterion (2), I would only like to mention the danger when
a VAA is prepared by a lobby group (the Slovak VAA
Politický Supermarket organized by pro-liberal Hayek
Institute in 2006 may be an example).
I am going to concentrate only on the last group (3) of
the quality criteria for VAAs, that is, the questions about
VAAs’ structure. These criteria may be checked more or
less easily. Unfortunately for the VAAs' authors, they may
be checked generally only after some time has passed since
the actual deployment of the VAA. So the analyses serve
more as valuable lessons to the VAAs' authors for
preparation of the next VAAs.
10.3. Quality depends on the method to construct a VAA
The selection of method for constructing a VAA itself
may determine the quality of the VAA.
a. Are all the relevant political parties included?
The VAA should contain all the parties, which will gain
seats in the parliament from the elections.
RCm: It usually includes most of them or all. The parties
without seats in the old parliament are, however, excluded.
VMm: It usually includes all. It fully depends on the
VAA's authors (and the will of the parties in case of
VMPm).
b. Are the VAA's questions relevant, are they going to be decided?
The questions should be discussed and decided (voted)
during the parliamentary term following the elections. Nonrelevant questions may be interesting, but they do not help
the user to choose the right party to correctly represent
him in the parliament.
RCm: It contains only questions, which have already been
voted in a parliament. The topics may get back to the
parliament, but only sometimes. It is one of the biggest
problems of the RCm.
VMm: Possibly. It depends on the VAA's authors and
their choice of questions.
c. Do the parties' answers reflect the truth?
The answers should correspond to parties' real votes on
the matter. Parties' programs and promises may differ
considerably from their actual behaviour.
RCm: 100 %. The real voting records are used. The only
difference may occur, if a party votes differently on the
same matter than it did during the previous parliamentary
term.
VMm: Possibly. It is totally left to the parties in case of
VMPm. It depends on the VAA's authors in case of
VMEm.
d. Do the structure of questions model correctly the political space?
The political space has dimensions like economic left and
right, liberalism–conservatism–socialism, pro-EU and antiEU, and so on. The shape of the political space emerge
from the votes in the parliament (not the way round, as it is
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Michal Škop
usually done in VAAs). Therefore these dimensions vary in
each parliament. The VAA should closely reproduce the
real political space in order to provide a user with a good
advice. It means that the parties' positions against each
others from the real political space should be reproduced in
the VAA. Parties, which vote alike in the parliament, should
result close to each other in the VAA; parties, which vote
differently, should be farther also in the VAA. Particularly,
the VAA should not oversimplify the political space. For
example, it should not have only questions on the left-right
division, when there is also the pro-EU and anti-EU
dimension presented in the parliament.
RCm: Possibly. It depends on the VAA's authors and their
choice of questions.
VMm: Possibly. It depends on the VAA's authors and
their choice of questions.
To summarize the above: The RCm is generally less
depending on the VAA's authors, the method “takes care”
about many issues itself. On the contrary, the VMm
depends on the authors very much. It is much easier to end
with a bad VAA (which misleads the users) in case of VMm
than in case of RCm.
10.4. Case study: VAAs realized for the Czech general elections 2006
The case study uses two VAAs prepared for the general
elections to the Lower House of the Parliament in the
Czech Republic in June 2006. There were only two VAAs
prepared for the elections – KohoVolit.eu and Volební rádce
(“Elections Adviser” in English) by iDnes.cz.
KohoVolit.eu (RCm) is run by a non-partisan Czech-Slovak
NGO with the same name. It has prepared several VAAs,
using both RCm and VMm (the first pan-European RCm in
2009 among others). Here I use the VAA made for the
Czech elections 2006. It consisted of 28 questions and
included 5 political parties 2.
iDnes.cz (Volební rádce, VMPm) was the most visited Czech
news portal at the time of the elections. Their VAA
consisted of 23 questions and they included 8 political
parties.
Five political parties were elected to the Lower House
during the Czech general elections in June 2006. The
government was supported by the coalition of the
Conservatives, the Christians and the Greens, with help of
2 MPs elected for the Socialists. The opposition consisted
of the Socialists and the Communists. There were other
MPs switching the sides later on, and the Christians split
into two parties in 2009, but it does not have a serious
impact on the case study. The overview is given in Table
10.1.
The government lost the vote of confidence in March
2009. Although the mayor parties agreed on early elections
to be hold in October 2009, the Constitutional Court ruled
them out and the elections are expected to take place
during spring 2010. Therefore the results of the case study
may yet change, but very probably not significantly.
To summarize: There were two big parties (the
Conservatives and the Socialists) and three smaller ones
(the Communists, the Christians and the Greens) in the
Lower House for the parliamentary term 2006 – 2010.
2
Note: The present author is co-author of this application.
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Michal Škop
Table 10.1 – Political parties and number of their MPs elected to the
Lower House of the Czech Parliament during general elections in 2006
MPs
Ideology
English denomination
Governmental coalition
ODS
KDU-ČSL
SZ
+ Switchers
from ČSSD
81
13
6
Conservatives Civic democratic party
Christian Dem. Union
Christians
Green party
Greens
2
Opposition
ČSSD
74 (-2)
KSČM
26
Socialists
Communists
Czech Social
Democratic Party
Communist Party of
Bohemia and Moravia
Source: <http://www.vlada.cz>
10.5. The quality criteria evaluated in cases of the Czech VAAs
This criterion may be measured easily by the proportion
of the parties or MPs elected to the parliament, which had
also been included in the VAA.
KohoVolit.eu. Out of the parties who gained seats in the
parliament, only the Green party was not included (as it
had not been present in the previous Lower House).
Therefore 4 out of 5 parties were included (80%), which
accounted for 194 out of 200 newly elected MPs (97%).
(The 95% confidence interval for the percentage of parties
is 45% – 100%.)
iDnes.cz. All the elected parties were included (100%).
b. Are the VAA's questions relevant, are they going to be decided?
I measure this criterion using the number of the VAA's
questions, which were actually discussed and voted in the
Parliament or the Parliament had an impact on them, e.g.,
they could be decided by the Government elected by the
Parliament.
KohoVolit.eu. Two of the 28 questions (from the previous
parliamentary term) were voted again, and up to 11 others
were similar to the ones voted in the new Lower House.
One was voted in Senate. Other two were discussed in the
Government (elected by the Lower House). Altogether,
more than half of the questions in the VAA found its
reflex in the new Lower House (16 questions out of 28,
57%). We, as the authors, may expect the percentage to be
between 39% and 75%, if we were to use the same way to
construct a VAA (it is the 95% confidence interval around
57%). It seems to me a rather good result for this criterion
(for a RCm, as this is a weak point for this method).
iDnes.cz. 11 out of the 23 questions were voted in the
Lower House. One question was voted only in Senate (“Are
you for banning the propaganda of communism?”). Even if other
two of the questions belonged to the responsibility of the
Government (elected by the Lower House), the rest was
practically out of reach of politicians in the Parliament
(e.g.,“What rate of unemployment will be in 2010?”). There was
also another problem with the quality of the VAA from
this point of view: Five of the questions were voted in one
single division (the complex law included five of the
questions, but also many other changes). Anyway, we may
calculate roughly that slightly more than a half of the
questions were really voted in the Parliament or the
Parliament had some influence on them (14 of 23, 61%). If
the authors were to use the same way to construct a new
VAA, the may expect the percentage between 41% and
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Michal Škop
81% (the 95% confidence interval for the rate estimated to
61%). To me, it seems to be rather a under-standard result
(for a VMm, as this is generally a strong point of this
method).
c. Do the parties' answers reflect the truth?
I measure this criterion by the percentage of consistency
between VAA's answers and how the MPs voted during the
parliamentary term. The value around 50% would be
achieved by a “random vote” or “random answers” – when
the MPs' real votes and the parties' answers in the VAA are
uncorrelated. The VAA would give false (opposite) advices
if the value was under 50%.
KohoVolit.eu. This criterion is fulfilled “by definition”,
thanks to the way the RCm is constructed (it uses the real
recorded votes as answers).
iDnes.cz. There were some problems worth mentioning
with the quality of the VAA from this point of view:
- Some questions were too general: For example, “Shall all
patients pay for the medical prescription?”. The topic was
voted several times in the Lower House, two of them:
“Shall patients pay for the medical prescription?” and “Shall
patients excluding children under 18 years pay for the medical
prescription?”. These two questions may be voted very
differently and therefore these VAA's question was not
constructed well.
- Questions voted more times and differently: For
example, “Shall patients pay for their stay in hospitals?”.
- Questions were a part of more complex divisions: For
example, the question “Should be nuclear energy produced in
the Czech Republic?” was part of the governmental
confidence vote.
The overall (considering all MPs) results gave 63% match
between the MPs' votes and the parties' answers in the
VAA (95% confidence interval 36% – 90%). Therefore it is
not even statistically significantly better than a random vote
(50%), although the actual result (63%) is better than the
random vote (see breakdown by the parties in Table 10.2).
Table 10.2 – Match between the VAA's answers given by the parties
and their real voting behaviour
Party
ČSSD (Socialists)
KDU-ČSL (Christians)
KSČM (Communists)
ODS (Conservatives)
SZ (Greens)
All MPs
Match
59%
61%
72%
63%
76%
95% confidence inteval
63%
36% - 90%
31% - 87%
34% - 89%
46% - 97%
36% - 90%
52% - 100%
Only the Greens (and almost the Communists) have the
result statistically significantly better than the random vote.
For those interested in the exact procedure, the calculations
went as follow:
- The match of a single MP with a party's single answer to
the VAA: if the answer was “yes” and he voted in
favour, or if the answer was “no” and he voted against
or abstained (vote “abstain” has the same effect as “no”
in the Czech Parliament, except for few particular
divisions). Disagreement – in opposite cases. Half
agreement and half disagreement – in case the MP was
absent (therefore we do not know how he would have
voted).
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Michal Škop
- The match with a single answer for a whole party was
calculated simply as the average over all MPs, members
of the party's parliamentary club at the moment of
casting votes. The MPs who had been elected for a
party, but had left it later, were not included in the
calculation (there were only few such MPs, but they
often switched the sides: from the opposition to the
governmental coalition and vice versa). In case of more
divisions about the same question – the average of them
was used (so each question had the same weight in the
calculation).
- The overall match is simply the average of the matches
for every question and all the MPs. The confidence
interval was estimated rather roughly using the
estimation for a binomial distribution. (But taking into
account all the inaccuracies of the questions and
respective divisions, the error introduced by the use of
the rough statistical method instead of a complex model
is quite irrelevant.)
d. Do the structure of questions model correctly the political space?
This criterion may be measured in many ways. One of
them is to compare the “distances” between the parties
using the answers in the VAA and “distances” in reality
using the MPs' voting records. Practically, the correlation or
distance matrices may be used. There is not a standard way
to compare two such matrices, an easy way to do it is to
decompose the correlation matrices using factor analysis
(or similar method – Nominate algorithm, etc.), take the
first two dimensions and compare position of the parties in
this new 2D space.
KohoVolit.eu. The factor analysis (principal components
analysis) was used to compute the dimensions. There were
two computations used – a) using all real recorded votes
and b) the answers/recorded votes from the VAA's
questions only – and then the results were overlaid.
Therefore the dimensions do not represent exactly the
same. However, the structure should be the same to fulfill
the criterion (generally, it does not hold always the other
way round, the same “picture” does not guarantee the
criterion fulfilment). The structure computed from the
VAA is based on the previous Lower House, because of
the nature of the RCm. It differs from the one computed
from the voting records, particularly the position of the
Christians is different (see Figure 10.1) . It is due to the
very different government majority and opposition for
parliamentary terms before and after 2006 (the
Government until 2006 consisted of Socialists + Christians
+ Liberals, and after 2006 of Conservatives + Christians +
Greens).
iDnes.cz. The computation is similar to the first case.
There were also two factor analyses, one using all the rollcall voting records (dashed line), the other only the
recorded roll-call votes for the VAA's questions (solid line)
– it is like in the previous case, the two sets of dimensions
are not exactly the same. But again, the pictures should be
similar to fulfil the criterion. The parties' answers to the
VAA (dotted line) are projections to the space constructed
using the real roll-call votes (solid line), they have identical
dimensions. And the picture should again be similar. We
may see that there are actually two structures to look at,
because of the big discrepancy between the parties' answers
and their real voting behaviour. The selection of the
questions covers the whole space well if looking at the real
votes. But the parties voted very differently from their
answers to the VAA. It means that the VAA's authors chose
good questions to represent the political space, which has
emerged during the parliamentary term. However, this fact
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Michal Škop
was destroyed by the false parties' answers to the VAA (see
Figure 10.2).
Figure 10.1 – Comparison of the political space:
roll-call votes vs. VAA structure
Note: Dashed line represents roll-call votes in the Lower House;
solid line represents VAA structure
Figure 10.2 – Comparison of the political space:
roll-call votes vs. parties’ answer to VAA
Note: Dashed line represents roll-call votes in the Lower House;
solid line represents parties’ answers to the VAA
10.6. Summary of the criteria
We can summarize the results of the evaluation of the
four criteria into Table 10.3.
We can see, that the iDnes.cz's VAA (VMPm) crucial
problem is the discrepancy between parties' answers to the
questions before the elections and their actual behaviour
(votes) afterwards. This fact considerably degrades the
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whole VAA. The advices obtained from such VAA are only
slightly better than random ones. There were also too many
irrelevant questions.
Table 10.3 – VAA’s evaluation criteria: A summary
Criterion
VMm (iDnes.cz)
RCm (KohoVolit.eu)
Generally
Case study
Usually yes
100%
All, or almost all
80 % (45% - 100%)
b. Are the questions “the” important questions, which are being discussed?
Generally
Case study
Possibly
52% (32% - 73%)
Partly
50% (31% - 69%)
c. Do the parties' answers (stands) reflect the truth?
Generally
Case study
Possibly
63% (36% - 90%)
100%
100%
d. Do the structure of questions cover correctly the political space?
Generally
Case study
Possibly
Good (Qs); Bad (As)
Possibly
Good
The biggest problems of KohoVolit.eu's VAA (RCm) are
the exclusion of one of the elected parties (even if the
smallest one) and the selection of the questions. The VAA
provides users with a true view on the parliament, but it is
quite anchored in the past.
10.7. Conclusion and discussion
The main goal of a Voting Advice Applications (VAA) is
to suggest to a user a party (or candidate), which is going to
represent him in the best way possible after the elections.
Generally, it should provide the user with information, how
all the relevant parties would represent him. However, this
simple general criterion is directly immeasurable. Therefore,
the aim of this study was to introduce a set of criteria to be
able to measure the quality of a VAA.
I introduced three basic categories of the criteria: (1)
Calculation and Interpretation; (2) Unbiasedness; and (3)
Selection of parties, questions and answers (e.g., Structure).
I concentrated on the last category only, because it can be
calculated directly from publicly accessible “hard” data (i.e.,
on-line roll-call voting records).
I also described three different methods to construct a
VAA and showed that the choice of the method is of great
importance for the quality of the VAA. There is no single
best method, each having its advantages and limitations.
In the study, I tested two real VAAs using the criteria.
Both VAAs were prepared for the general elections in the
Czech Republic in 2006. As the parliamentary term is
almost over, it was possible to evaluate the results. The two
VAAs were prepared by different authors using different
methods. The big news portal iDnes.cz used probably the
most traditional method: statements (questions) prepared
by them and answers provided by the parties. The NGO
KohoVolit.eu used questions based on real divisions from the
Parliament (from the past term) and the roll-call voting
records served naturally as the answers.
I found out that both VAAs were worth to use, as the
user got generally advice, which was better than no advice
at all (the random advice). Nevertheless, both VAAs had
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also important problems.
The biggest problem of the iDnes.cz's VAA was a huge
difference between parties' answers to the VAA and their
real votes later on in the Parliament. Thus the VAA heavily
supported the misleading election propaganda of the
parties. There is an open question, if this problem is more
general or it is rather a problem of this particular VAA
(taking into account that the Czech Republic is still a
“young” democracy when compared to the Western
European countries).
On the other hand, the most important problem of the
KohoVolit.eu's VAA was its excessive concentration on the
past and not on the future.
The results of the case study show that the question of
quality of VAAs should be more investigated as the VAAs
are very probably going to be used more often and for
different kinds of elections in the very near future. The
case study also shows that the existing and established
VAAs may have serious problems with the trustworthiness
of their advices. It might suggest a way for a new
generation of VAAs, which would combine the strong
points from the different methods avoiding the pitfalls. In
my opinion, the development of these new VAAs is one of
the important challenges for the VAAs' authors for the
coming years.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The use of Voter Advice Application in Poland –
Glosuje.com.pl
AGATA DZIEWULSKA
As the turnout in the European Parliamentary elections
continues to decrease to the now alarming level of under
50% of the eligible population, the question of an effective
solution is more and more frequently raised. In the first
elections to the EP in 1979, almost 62% of those who were
eligible took part in the elections 1. From then on, the turnout has progressively decreased in the following elections,
reaching for the first time in 1999 the level of under 50%.
While the result of 45,47% of voter participation in 2004
could have raised concern, the recent EP elections of June
2009 reached the astonishingly low level of 43% in the
scale of the entire European Union in spite of there being
several states in the EU where participations in elections is
obligatory and therefore the turnout very high. Poland is
not one of these.
In an analysis of the unimpressive EU average, the statistics on the participation of Poles in the EP elections may
demonstrate where the low Europe-wide score can originate. In 2004, shortly after Poland had joined the EU in
May 2004, Poles took part for the first time in the elections
to the EP. The attendance reached the level of merely
20,87% which was partly excused by the lack of experience
1
All the data presented in this paragraph comes from:
<www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/archive/elections2009>;
accessed 05/01/2010.
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Agata Dziewulska
in how things work in the EU although there is unfortunately no research that can prove that today, five years
later, the voter know-how of the EU elections has grown
very much. In the recent elections the turnout amounted to
24,53% of eligible voters 2. In precise figures, there are
30.565.272 eligible voters in Poland and just over 7.5 million of them turned up for the elections. Although the percentage is higher than the last time, in fact only just under a
quarter of voters took time to vote and showed an interest
in the event.
While in political circles the low attendance was anticipated, it was hard to think of how to increase it. Why is it
that people do not go voting? What could be done in order
to make them go?
This article studies the results of a Voter Advice Application (VAA) project applied in Poland in the context of
these two questions. As Glosuje.com.pl – the VAA studied –
was aimed to be first and foremost a means of raising turnout, the utility of the application is presented in the broader
context of a voter profile. Therefore the first part of the
paper presents a survey on anticipated voter commitment
done in April 2009 and concentrates on the “structure” of
voters, dividing them into three large categories: those who
declared their participation in the elections, those who refused to take part and a group of hesitant voters. This first
part of the article aims to identify the reasons for there being such a big group of hesitant voters and studies how
those reasons could have been neutralised. As it appears,
one of the crucial arguments hesitant voters indicated was
their poor understanding of the elections.
2
The statistics on the turnout in the Polish EP elections of 2009 comes
from the Polish State Electoral Commission (<www.pe2009.
pkw.org.pl>; accessed 05/01/2010).
Chapter Eleven - The use of Voter Advice Application in Poland
The second part of the article presents Mypolitiq – a
VAA applied in Lithuania, Poland and Latvia with the aim
of disseminating information about the EP elections – and
offers some statistics regarding the use of this tool. Particular attention is drawn to the Polish branch of this VAA
(Glosuje.com.pl) and data collected on the behaviour and
preferences of its users. Several elements of the project are
analysed, such as the issue of candidates’ registration, the
building of the questionnaire, the promotion of the project.
This part of the article is concluded with lessons learned
about the project and a judgement of the extent to which
VAA was useful for voters and its influence on the turnout
of the EP 2009 elections.
11.1. A profile of Polish voters and a hypothesis of reasons for their apparent reluctance to participate in EU elections
In April 2009 the Warsaw-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) presented data prepared by the TNS-OBOP research group concerning the expected voter participation in
the then-coming elections 3. The main focus of the survey
was to identify the undecided voters and the reasons for
their hesitation. From the IPA analysis we learn that 35%
of the respondents declared their “definite” participation in
3 The Institute of Public Affairs is an independent, non-partisan public
policy think tank aiming to support modernization reforms and to provide a forum for informed debate on social and political issues in Poland. It conducts research as well as societal analysis and presents policy
recommendations. The research analysed in this article is entitled Uczestnictwo Polaków w wyborach – postawy wobec nadchodzących wyborów do Parlamentu Europejskiego, and can be found on the web page of the Institute
of Public Affairs (<http://www.isp.org.pl/?v=page&id=650&ln=pl>;
accessed 20/01/2010).
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Agata Dziewulska
the elections. Already this data, compared to the actual
turnout in the elections of merely a month and 10 days later
– which was barely 25% and thus 10% lower than the survey had promised – proves interesting and delivers a valuable conclusion: a considerable proportion of the population surveyed will say things they feel they are expected to
possibly just in order to make them look good. From then
on, working on the voter participation and awarenessraising becomes a truly demanding occupation.
Further, the research showed that there is very little
knowledge regarding both the EP and the EU as far as the
researched group is concerned. The lack of awareness is
represented by the high percentage of wrong answers indicated relating to the question of the way the EP is elected.
Only 52% of the researched group said that the Polish
members of the EP are selected by voters in state-wide
elections. Alternative answers to the same question indicated that the members of the EP are picked:
- “by the Polish parliament from amongst its members” (19% of
respondents);
- “designated by the government” (8% of respondents);
- “designated by the president” (2% of respondents);
- “it’s hard to say” (19% of respondents).
This means that only 52% of the population appears to
have any idea about the institutions of the EU. In April
2009, the data showed not only little improvement on expected participation in the EP elections of 2009 but also
practically nil upgrade of the know-how of the EP itself
compared to five years earlier. In 2004, two months after
the first EP elections in Poland had taken place, merely
48% of the researched group demonstrated an informed
opinion about the way the EP is made up. As the data
shows, little has changed in the five years between the first
and the second elections – the number of those who can
identify the way the EP is formed grew only by 4%, a figure
which can, by sceptics, easily be placed within the margin
of error.
Table 11.1 – The awareness of Poles regarding the way
Polish MEPs are elected.
March
2003
August
2004
April
2009
They are elected by the whole
society in elections
They are elected by the members
of the Polish parliament from
amongst themselves
They are designated by the Polish
government
They are designated by the Polish
president
It is hard to say
27%
48%
52%
21%
24%
19%
17%
6%
8%
3%
2%
2%
32%
20%
19%
Total
100%
100%
100%
Source: Institute of Public Affairs, <http://www.isp.org.pl/?v=
page&id=650&ln=pl>; accessed 20/01/2010
That the knowledge of the EP had not improved since
Poland joined the EU in 2004 could hardly have come as a
surprise, as the facts about the EU institutions had not
been broadcast by the state authorities and there was no
major campaign promoting general knowledge of the EU
and the EP. The society proves to know little about the EU
which prompts a suggestion that there is a high level of
confusion and perhaps even intimidation among Poles
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Agata Dziewulska
which can influence the turnout, the mechanism being that
if people are lost in the unsorted and therefore incomprehensible information they get, they are disoriented and reluctant to take part in events relating to this confused area.
There is also an identifiable correlation between the recognition of the correct way of electing the members of the
EP and declared participation in the June 2009 elections:
the greater the knowledge of the EP, the more likely a person would be to intend to vote. The same stands for the
age and general level of education: the younger and better
educated a person, the more likely s/he would be to declare
a definite intention to take part in the elections. Nevertheless, further research would be required before making a
general rule out of these correlations at present.
11.2. Hesitant voters – how many are there and who are they?
Alongside the 35% of the population who declared their
definite will to take part in the EP elections in 2009, there
was a very large group of those who hesitated. About 41%
was still considering whether or not to go voting as late as
mid April, with the elections scheduled for the beginning of
June: 14% declared “rather going voting”, 16% – “rather
not going voting” and 11% – “still do not know”. That
would mean that two months before the elections there
were still 41% of voters open to arguments in favour of
taking part in the poll. The general characteristic of this
group could be demonstrated by their knowledge of the
EU institutions and their attitude towards the EU. Most of
those who in April were considering taking part in the elections did not know the exact procedure for the forming of
the EP. Whilst the ones who declared their definite intention to participate in the elections made up 44% of those
who knew elections were the key to choosing members of
the EP, the undecided eligible voters (who were a bigger
group than the “definite voters” by 6%) made up 34%.
This means that a large part of the hesitant voters were not
aware of the importance of the elections. Possibly they
would have gone to vote if they had realised the significance of their action as there is high declared support for
elections as such in Poland due possibly to historical reasons. The analysis of the voters’ attitudes towards the elections showed that about 33% of the respondents declared
that “it is very important to take part in elections” while
40% said “it is rather important”. These were by far the
largest groups of all, followed by only 14% of those who
said elections were “rather unimportant” and 6% of those
who think taking part in elections is definitely irrelevant. In
general terms, therefore, there is strong support in the society for the elections as such – at least as declared.
11.3. Why do hesitant voters stay at home?
As the IPA April 2009 research showed, mostly those
who are satisfied with the performance of the EU with regard to the development of Poland over the last years are
happy to elect members of the EP. The group of dissatisfied declared their definite intention not to take part in the
elections, while it is hard to present the definite profile of
the hesitant eligible voters. Their voices on whether it
turned out to be profitable to join the EU or not are divided evenly.
There were several issues that kept the hesitant eligible
voters on hold. When asked about the reasons for their not
intending to take part in the elections, the respondents indicated foremost:
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Agata Dziewulska
- “it is hard to say” (23% of respondents);
- “the lack of the appropriate candidate” (18% of respondents);
- “I do not feel adequately informed about the elections or
candidates” (14% of respondents);
- “I do not trust parties or politicians” (14% of respondents);
- “I am not interested in politics” (11% of respondents).
Another round of similar questions to which the respondents could have given more than one answer confirmed
the results above: over one third of the researched group
indicated their lack of trust for the politicians and political
parties and close to a third declared they were not properly
informed about the elections or the candidates. When
asked whether there was something that could convince
them to go voting, the respondents indicated:
•
•
•
•
•
“there is nothing that would convince me” (28% of
respondents);
“hard to say” (23% of respondents);
“the right candidates and programmes” (21% of respondents);
“if I got more respect for the politics and politicians” (14% of
respondents);
“an informative campaign about the elections and the candidates”
(10% of respondents).
Leaving aside those who declared nothing would convince them, and taking into account that there is little one
could do in the short term in order to raise the level of trust
for the politicians, there appeared to be still a viable way of
gaining support for the elections.
As some of the respondents declared that a good campaign delivering information about the elections and introducing candidates would probably make them go voting
(i.e. 10% above) and that finding a proper candidate was
the key for them (i.e. 21% above) adding to this the chance
that some of those who had declared “hard to say” would
change their minds, it was indeed a measurably consistent
group. If the declarations people made coincided with their
actual behaviour and a voter was a purely rational item, one
third of the eligible voters from the group that considered
attending elections (the hesitant ones) could have been
convinced to join the elections if properly informed about
them. A third of the large group of 41% makes 13,5%.
Therefore – and again considering a voter rational – if the
35% of the population who declared they would take part
in the elections had in fact gone to vote and had been
joined by the 13,5% of those who were ready to go if they
had received enough information about the EP, elections
and the candidates, the turnout in Poland would have had a
fair chance of amounting to 48,5%. True, that would be
under 50% but still above the EU average in 2009.
The IPA survey is concluded with a remark that there is
little knowledge among Poles about the EU and its institutions, about the importance of the EP and its role in the
EU, together with little recognition of the way the EP is
elected. There is no project on informing the society about
the EU current undertakings that would succeed and the
elected members of the EP do not seem to have time or interest to interact with people in their constituencies, to
provide them with information about what it is they do. In
order to increase the election turnout there is the need to
talk openly about the advantages of participation in the EU.
As for medium and short-term measures, the IPA recommends that since the large group of hesitant eligible voters
know little about the EP and elections, there is an urgent
need to deliver them information and initiate activities
which could increase the voter turnout.
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11.4. Mypolitiq – VAA in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia
As if in response to the demand, a couple of months before the announcement of the IPA research results in April,
the Centre for Europe of the University of Warsaw had
started cooperation on a Voter Advice Application with an
international group called Mypolitiq – a Lithuania-based
NGO 4. The project involved the introduction of a Smart
Voting System which would help interested voters in Poland to find out more about the candidates. The Polish project called Glosuje.com.pl started operations online in mid
May, about 3 weeks before the EP elections 5. By registering
their answers and comments, the candidates made it possible for internauts (hereafter internet users) to compare their
opinions with those of the politicians by filling in the same
form. There were thirty five questions to answer in several
thematic groups: general, foreign policy, economy, social
policy and education, energy, home and justice affairs, ethics. All the questions were formulated so that there were
only five answers possible: “agree”, “somewhat agree”,
“somewhat disagree”, “disagree”, “no opinion”. After a
voter had completed the questionnaire, the application indicated all the candidates registered in the database in a list
starting from those whose opinions on the issues related to
the EU were closest to the ones of the voter, and finishing
with those whose answers were least compatible. Therefore
the application indicated more than just one politician, allowing the voter to survey the opinions of all those candidates who had registered their answers. For a voter who
was searching for the right candidate to vote for, Glosuje.com.pl seemed to be the perfect answer.
4
The project web site is available on <http://www.mypolitiq.eu>.
The Polish branch of the project can be found on
<http://www.Glosuje.com.pl>.
5
The same 35 questions were made available to voters in
Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. One of the aims of the project was to prepare similar conditions in all three countries
so that it would be possible at a later stage to carry out
comparative analysis. The table below demonstrates the basic data on the tool used in these three countries.
Table 11.2 – Mypolitiq – basic statistics in Poland, Lithuania & Latvia
Poland
Lithuania
Latvia
Users
Visits
Completed tests
Total candidates
Candidates registered on the site
43,830
56,119
28,823
1,300
142
39,499
52,277
7,527
265
88
2,242
3,141
1,255
180
31
Registration rate
11.18%
33.21%
17.22%
Source: data collected by the Mypolitiq project team
on the basis of Google Analytics.
One of the first things one reads from this data is the
comparatively good performance of the Lithuanian part of
the project – for instance the number of visits paid was almost as high as in Poland despite the huge difference in the
size of population. The largest number of newly elected EP
members, 50, comes from Poland while there are 12 new
Lithuanian members of the EP and 8 of the current members of the EP come from Latvia. Compared to the number of newly elected members of the EP, Lithuania did best
of all of three researched countries in terms of the relation
between the visitors of the web site of the project and the
places in the EP. Although Poland had almost 44 thousand
users who visited the site for a total of over 56 thousand
times, the electorate of Poland is larger than that of Lithua-
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Agata Dziewulska
nia by a much larger proportion 6. As the data in Table 11.2
indicates, the Lithuanian part of the project attracted about
39,5 thousand users who paid over 52 thousand visits. Latvia, with an electorate not much smaller than that of
Lithuania had only 2,2 thousand users who visited the site
for a total of just over 3 thousand times.
The success of the Lithuanian Mypolitiq can be explained
in two ways. Firstly, unlike in Poland or Latvia, the project
was run for the second time in Lithuania. The previous experience of implementing the Smart Voting System allowed
for an easier promotion of the project as it had been promoted in Lithuania for some time, with positive feedback
from users and Seed Camp advisors and judges 7. Secondly,
there were presidential elections run at the same time as the
EP elections in Lithuania so the interest in the elections as
such at that time was much higher than if it had been only
the matter of choosing new members of the EP (in Latvia
the EP 2009 elections were run together with the local elections). The general presumption would be that the higher
the interest in the elections, the more useful any kind of
6
According to the Polish State Electoral Commission, there were
30.565.272
eligible
voters
in
Poland
in
2009
(<http://www.pe2009.pkw.org.pl>). In Lithuania, the Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania declares that there were
2.692.397 eligible voters for the EP 2009 elections
(<http://www.vrk.lt>) and similar data for Latvia would be 1.388.875
registered voters in 2002 (<http://www.electionguide.org>; accessed
21/01/2009). Although this data is not guaranteed correct for the EP
2009 elections, it may be useful in comparison of scales.
7
The project was awarded “The Most Innovative Non-commercial
Product 2008” on the Lithuanian Infobalt trades, “The Innovation
Prize of 2008” from the Lithuanian Centre for Innovation and Lithuanian Economic Forum and won the “Seedcamp Warsaw” for Central
and Eastern Europe in 2009. Seedcamp is a kind of fair for new ideas
in IT, with a competent body of advisors and judges who help to get a
start-up project off the ground.
voter advisor application and the more interest in such devices from the voters.
Lithuania also showed the highest registration rate, which
is the proportion between the total number of the candidates and the number that registered on the web page. Out
of 265 candidates, 88 registered their profiles on the Mypolitiq web page in Lithuania (about 33%). The scale for
Poland was very different as there were 1300 candidates
and about 11% of them filled in the glousje.com.pl questionnaire. However, in actual figures that does mean that
142 candidates were successfully approached. Obviously,
fuelling or even suggesting any competition between the
branches of the project in the three countries was definitely
not the point. One of the long-term goals would be to
come to common conclusions about voter behaviour in
these countries but for 2009 it was not possible for a number of reasons, the most relevant being a decentralisation in
terms of financing and marketing. The top priority was to
keep the project compact as far as the questionnaire was
concerned in all three countries, and political, economic
and social scientists and specialists in EU issues from all
three countries worked together on preparing the best possible set of questions 8. Apart from this close collaboration,
there were different teams working on the development of
the project in different countries. The Polish branch of the
project was composed of merely 3 part-time volunteers and
had virtually no finances to promote the project in advertising or in the dissemination of information among the candidates and users. It was all done more by strength of volunteer manpower rather than by any financially viable
8
The project leaders are: Institute of International Relations and Political Sciences of the University of Vilnius, Centre for Europe of the University of Warsaw, Institute of Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kazimierz Pulaski Foundation.
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means with the result that it has so far not been feasible to
prepare any follow-up research on the statistics in the three
countries involved in the project.
11.5. Glosuje.com.pl in Poland – the candidates
The registration of the candidates was on a voluntary basis and was completed by the candidates themselves or else
their teams. None of the candidates was included in the database without his or her full consent. Although a relatively
low percentage of candidates in Poland registered with Glosuje.com.pl (142 out of 1300), it managed to attract the majority of the leaders of the electoral lists, and their registration on the web page was indicative for the rest of the candidates on the lists of the same parties. There was too a
large sample of candidates of numbers two to five on the
electoral lists that registered. Therefore, although the number of candidates registered could appear to be few in
comparison to the total number of candidates, the most
important ones did join which meant that the users had access to a fair representation of the political options.
Only one party currently relevant in the political life was
under-represented: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice –
the party of the current president of Polandthe party Jarosław Kaczyński is the head of) registered only one candidate. The lack of a reasonable sample of candidates from
this particular party was in fact the missing link in the project, and the only weak point indicated by the users in their
feedback. Although it was clear that the in-depth research
on voter preferences can be conducted only with the participation of candidates of a large variety of parties, there
was little to be done with respect to the encouraging of the
under-represented party (and no funds available anyway for
more extensive research). All the parties and their candi-
dates were approached in the same intensive manner although this particular one did not agree to considering a
VAA a useful form of promotion despite the presentation
of the VAA being an attractive space for the candidates to
present their opinions: next to the questionnaire there was
also space available for comments on the answers. This
space was intended to provide a soap box for the candidates to explain their thinking about the matter the question related to. Sixty one of the candidates used the comment space but only one of them commented on all of the
answers he gave.
11.6. Who used the VAA in Poland? The profile of a user
The main obstacle to more successful marketing was the
budget of the project. As it was practically non-existent, the
body of the work was done using cheap tools on the web.
Apart from a couple of short articles that appeared in the
daily press in the second half of May giving the project
good press, mailing lists were used and free promotion web
pages, like Wykop.pl – a web page designed to promote
anything internet users consider a good idea or an interesting web page. In fact, a note on Wykop.pl caused interest in
the project to grow overnight from about a thousand visits
a day to over ten thousand in 24 hours. Then the avalanche
stopped and the project team used other forms of promotion. The experience with a free online promotion tool
made it clear that in creating a Voter Advisor Application
project, a good knowledge of current trends in web users’
behaviour is essential.
The majority of the users of Glosuje.com.pl came from Poland (over 53 thousand visits), but there was some interest
in the application in the UK, Germany, USA, Belgium, The
Netherlands, Ireland and France, as well as slight traffic
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from partner countries: Lithuania and Latvia. While the interest of the last two countries to figure on the list occurred
most probably because the project was well linked between
the country web pages of the project, the first group of
states may to some extent demonstrate the interest of Polish ex-pats in different parts of the world. In fact considering these users, at one stage, after having reviewed a number of suggestions, the idea came up of opening a web application designed for London, mainly in order to encourage Poles there to vote. After considerable discussion the
idea collapsed however as there was little time and few resources to carry it out.
Table 11.3 – Total population and page view statistics in big cities
City
Warsaw
Kraków
Poznań
Wrocław
Katowice
Lódź
Lublin
Gdańsk
Szczecin
Bydgoszcz
Number of
page views
Total
population
15,845
5,454
3,892
3,536
2,597
2,391
1,683
1,564
1,406
1,102
1,706,600
756,600
560,900
632,900
312,200
753,200
351,800
455,700
407,800
361,200
on the basis of Google Analytics;
Concise Statistical Yearbook of Poland, 2009
(Warsaw: Central Statistical Office)
Regarding the users in Poland, most of them live in big
cities and in fact there is a correlation between the size of a
place and the number of internauts interested in the project: in general terms – with some exceptions – the bigger
the city the more visits, with Warsaw – the capital city (1,7
mln. inhabitants and over 15 thousand visits) – outnumbering by almost three times the next city on the list – Kraków
(0,75 mln. inhabitants and just under 5,5 thousand visits).
The table below offers data relating to the size of a city and
Glosuje.com.pl source of traffic.
It may well be for at least two reasons that there were
more Glosuje.com.pl users in big cities. One of them is that as
in a big city there live more people than in a small, it is easier to obtain a high number of them using the web site. An
alternative explanation would relate more to the data on
internet usage. This second analysis would rather concentrate on the argument that people in medium and small cities are prone to other, more traditional forms of promotion
– like billboards, advertisements in newspapers or TV
commercials – than advertising on the web and even more
so people in places smaller that a small city. This hypothesis
cannot be verified at the moment as there was no study
done on the usage of internet in relation to the Glosuje.com.pl
project. This, however, remains one of the aspects of the
project to be examined in due course.
11.7. The questionnaire – what it involved and what it says about the
voters
There were six areas of questions: “foreign policy”, “economic policy”, “social policy”, “energy policy”, “ethics and
values”, “general questions” placed in the questionnaire in
this particular order, which was selected on the basis of the
suggestions of the beta-testers of the project. It was assumed that a user accessed the questionnaire at the indicated beginning and was expected to follow as suggested by
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the application, nevertheless it was possible to skip a number of questions and choose the area which would be of the
user’s greatest interest (the areas were clearly marked on the
top side of the questionnaire and a user could have changed
the area at any point). Although the users answered the
question more or less as designed in the project, there were
questions that attracted more attention than others. For instance, a strikingly high interest was enjoyed by question
number 31 (that is the one close to the end of the questionnaire) which received most answers, followed by questions number one and two. This question number 31 related to the future shape of the EU, its character and institutions: “do you agree that the EU should turn into a federation?”.
In comparative terms, the area of “foreign policy” was of
greatest interest to the users, with its two opening questions: “do you agree that the EU should have common
military forces?” and “do you agree that Turkey should join
the EU in the future?”. All out of five questions in the field
of foreign policy were within the top 15 of the most interest of the users. In this area, questions of a higher level of
generality attracted more attention than those relating to
details.
The second area of high interest was economic policy.
Again, it is hard to say to what extent it was so because of
its being placed second in the questionnaire and how much
it is of real interest to the users. Both foreign and economic
policies were compact in terms of the attention of the users
– the number of answers given to the questions in this area
are similar and therefore the questions are placed in ranking
of numbers of answers close to each other. With just one
exception: “do you agree that the EU should place much
more money for science and research in its budget?” did
not attract much attention.
The greatest discrepancy in terms of popularity and number of answers given indicated the area of “general questions” which was understandable, as it consisted of various
questions like the already quoted question number 31 or
these: “do you agree that the EP should be given more legislative power?”, “do you agree that unanimity voting in the
EU should be limited?”, “do you support the idea of internet voting in the EP elections?” or “do you agree that there
should be European-wide referenda on the most important
EU treaties?”. The field of general questions was the third
one in terms of popularity among users, closely followed by
“social policy” with its most popular question: “do you
agree that there should be a united, trans-border system of
health care in the EU for all the EU citizens?”. Least interesting of the social policy questions was the one relating to
the equalisation of incomes of men and women.
Energy policy questions did not receive any particular attention but they were largely diversified regarding the interest. While “do you agree that the EU should do everything
possible to diminish its dependence on energy resources
from Russia?” was the second least interesting of all the
questions, the NordStream pipeline project question was an
absolute hit. “Do you support the idea of building the
NordStream pipeline through the Baltic Sea?” drew the attention of so many people that it came sixth in the ranking
of popularity. A striking thing is that these two questions
relate to the same issue in fact. As the NordStream is
mainly a Russian initiative, its implementation would inevitable increase dependence of the EU on the Russian energy
resources. As there is no data as to which answers each of
the users indicated, it is hard to interpret this inconsistency.
It can be that the users assumed the two questions are
about the same issue and answered just one of them, but it
may also be that they preferred to answer a question that
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related to a something more specifically detailed. In this
case, the level of detail in questions would differ in the energy-related field from that of foreign policy, where the users preferred rather general questions. Yet another alternative explanation would relate to the information traffic in
mass media, which often use “NordStream” as a slogan,
rarely explaining the more overall issue of the EU energy
resource dependence.
“Ethics and values” were of least interest to the users and
none of them appears in the first 25 most answered questions. In this area, the 26th on the ranking list of popularity
comes: “do you agree that the EU should ban genetically
modified food?” and the rest of the questions of this field
come in the last five of the ranking. Least interesting of all
seemed to be the question about euthanasia: “do you support a law on euthanasia?”. The “ethics and values” field
had been hotly discussed between the specialists that took
part in the preparation of the questionnaire: those who
were in favour of including “ethics and values” argued that
it is more these issues that make the biggest distinction between the parties, as the political and economic programme
as well as social policy projects are very similar among
them. The ones who were against retorted that the questions should relate exclusively to the issues the EP has anything to do with and “ethics and values” are rather far from
these. The practice verified the second option as right as
there was very little (compared to other issues) interest in
this particular field. In order to formulate the ultimate
judgement about the inclusion of the “ethics and values”
questions, one would need to perform an analysis of the
internet usage as there is a large probability that this sort of
question would be important for a large group of voters
who do not use internet. Another option to verify would be
to research the electorate of the party that was under-
represented as there is a reason behind a belief that its electorate is prone to making a decision precisely in relation to
this sort of question but as there was only one candidate of
this party registered on the web site, probably few of the
voters used the VAA.
Table 11.4 – Glosuje.com.pl – the number of questions answered by users
Number of questions answered
1-4
5
6
7
8-29
30
31-33
34
35
Number of users
64-260
863
2,615
106
85-759
1,159
1,450-2,840
4,326
8,258
on the basis of Google Analytics
The discussion about the inclusion of the “ethics and
value” and the little interest it received from the users does
not mean, however, that the area should be abandoned
once and for all. Quite probably this sort of question would
prove useful in a different type of election: state parliamentary, local or even presidential. The EP elections questionnaire cannot expect to be universal. Regarding the number
of questions answered there is some interesting data available. The largest number of users did not answer all the 35
questions, skipping some on the way or concentrating only
on those they considered relevant. In general terms, users
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were interested in answering rather more questions than
fewer. Over 8,2 thousand users submitted their questionnaire with all 35 questions answered and that was the biggest group if we divide users into categories of the numbers
of the questions answered. Table 11.4 shows how many
questions were answered by how many users.
The second largest group, after the one that answered all
35 questions, was the one that marked 34 of them – it
amounted to half of the previous group with its over 4
thousand users. There were two thresholds visible with regard to the number of questions answered: the first one
was at the level of 6 questions, answered by 2615 people
(863 people answered 5 questions and only 106 users answered 7 questions). The second threshold was at the level
of 30 questions, where the rate of answers reached over
one thousand after a relatively low rate of between 7 and 29
answers. Between 30 and 33 answers the flow increases
gently and reaches a high level of over 4 thousand at 34
questions.
The above statistics for the number of questions answered could be interpreted as meaning that the questionnaire was possibly too long. It may have included rather too
many questions and forced a user to stay on the web page
for a little longer than s/he would be willing to. The first
large bulk of users stopped filling in the questionnaire after
the sixth question but once they got over the sixth, they
found it hard to stop and went on almost to the end of the
questionnaire. It should be possible to prepare a questionnaire of about 20 to 25 questions that would be both indicative and not too long in the perception of a user. An
ideal questionnaire should allow a user the feeling of a fair
sample of relevant questions at the same time as delivering
a satisfying and immediate answer.
11.8. Glosuje.com.pl – the major findings
The major question the project team intended to answer
was whether Glosuje.com.pl was a nice toy or a useful tool.
The user feedback gave rise to some optimism as a large
number of internauts responded that the tool was helpful
in finding the right candidate, therefore confirming the utility of the application. Unfortunately, for the reasons of little time, lack of experience and very limited funds, the
VAA was relatively simple and did not allow for the collection of data for a truly in-depth analysis of voter preferences. Such inquiry would need to comprehend the study
of several issues and a VAA project can be very helpful in
finding answers to some of the questions. The most interesting of them would be these:
- What were the answers most often given to the
questions by users?
- What was the correlation between the answers of the
users and the candidates?
- Who was the most popular candidate in terms of
correlation?
- Did the users vote according to the indications given on
the VAA?
Were Glosuje.com.pl to receive sufficient attention and
funding, there is a good chance of its proving useful not
only to the potential voters but also to the researchers. By
modifying Glosuje.com.pl in such a way as to be able to
achieve answers to these questions, the project team would
create a useful application for carrying out surveys. At the
same time it would be possible to broaden the knowledge
of the mechanism of how people decide to take part in the
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elections and – more importantly – what makes them vote
the way they do.
There are a number of improvements to be implemented
for the next elections. Under the guise of sample elections
a trial round of voting could be arranged which could to
some extent anticipate the outcome of the real elections.
This, however, would remain on a very approximate level
as it has been proved in a number of elections that online
“fake” voting rarely gives accurate predictions of election
results 9. Although the results of this online “voting” might
not be relevant to the outcomes of the elections, it would
probably increase the attractiveness of the application. In
terms of usefulness, a much more effective tool would be a
kind of exit poll, directed at investigating the extent to
which the VAA influenced the choice of its users. The
simplest way of doing it would be this: after having done
the questionnaire online the user could declare whether
s/he in fact intends to vote for the candidate that was
pointed out by the application as the most perfect match.
From a technical point of view, such an exit poll is relatively easy to introduce and would provide the project team
with very valuable data which could ideally move the project team closer to the answering of the crucial question of
to what extent voters choose their candidate because of his
or her opinions.
In the part of the April 2009 IPA survey, presented earlier in this article under the heading “Why do hesitant vot9
One of the candidates in the 2009 EP elections confessed that in his
previous electoral campaign (to the state parliament) he had given most
attention to the internet and had in fact been “elected” in a pre-run online voting, winning over the rest of the candidates by far. He had been
pronounced “the internauts’ candidate” – a sure winner – while in the
real elections he had fallen short by a number of votes and had not
won the post after all (on the basis of the interview with the candidate).
ers stay at home?”, 23% of the hesitant voters said that it
was hard to say what could have been done in order to
convince them to take part in the elections, another 18%
declared that they would have thought of going to vote if
they had found an appropriate candidate and yet another
14% of hesitant voters did not feel adequately informed
about the elections and candidates. A VAA should, it
would appear, completely solve the problem of the latter
group, who wanted to be better informed about the elections, largely influence the group of 18% who did not have
a candidate and probably also a part of those who declared
“it is hard to say”.
The expression of the issue of information concerning
candidates opens a whole Pandora’s Box bringing into focus one of the areas so far little researched: is it a fact that
people choose their candidate because of the issues of
merit? A couple of randomly picked users of Glosuje.com.pl
admitted that despite the suggestions of the application,
they voted for the second best. Amongst their reasons for
making the choice they did make were:
- “the candidate I voted for is younger (let us give him a chance)”;
- “the candidate I voted for had a very convincing campaign with
actors and celebrities encouraging to vote for him”;
- “the candidate I voted for answered one particular question I find
very relevant in a ‘better’ way”;
- “the candidate I voted for declares he knows more languages” (i.e.
5 instead of 4).
A brief analysis of the above answers shows that in order
to find out more about the reasons why people take part in
the elections and how they make decisions regarding whom
to vote for, one would need to prepare a much wider project than just the online application. A project that would
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Agata Dziewulska
cover entire mass media campaigns of the candidates: the
words and slogans used, the colours, people invited to take
part, the time factor, the sort of mass media used and so
on. It becomes evident, that people are often affected by an
“irrational” factor – emotions. Therefore a pure online tool
can certainly be useful but it is hard to estimate the extent
people are influenced by what it can offer. It would be interesting to study how relevant a VAA is for the voters.
Despite the fact that people declare they would take part in
the elections if they knew more about the candidates, this
may be interpreted that in fact they mean more a commercial style advertising campaign than a complex tool like Glosuje.com.pl. Even some of those who found the project essential in making up their minds, still are prone to the effect
of a TV spot.
The project confirmed that the choice of an application
that shows the correlation between a user and a particular
candidate rather than a party was a good one. Most definitely, choosing to place candidates on site rather than parties was doing it the hard way as it is relatively easy to prepare the matrix of answers along the party programmes –
one for every party. Getting a number of candidates to register and fill in a form of 35 questions is much more difficult but proved rewarding. There was no other VAA in Poland that would offer such a choice. This argument was
relevant for the candidates who generally (apart from the
majority of candidates of the above mentioned party that
did not join the project) found this a good opportunity to
promote themselves, as well as for the users who gained
access to a wide choice and large amount of information
about candidates’ opinions on European issues. A simple
exercise proved the individual, non-party oriented approach
a good idea: when submitting the questionnaire, a user received a whole list of the registered candidates in a ranking
from the most to the least compatible. Candidates of the
same party could have been distributed along the entire
ranking list, not just next to each other. Therefore it was
possible – and it often happened – that candidates of the
party the “leader” of the ranking list belonged to would
show up even on the 120th position. This made it evident
that it is less satisfactory for users to get just the option of
choosing from amongst parties rather than picking out of
particular candidates as there are most glaring discrepancies
between the opinions of the candidates of the same party.
Obviously, belonging to a party still remains one of the major factors in a political campaign and constitutes the chief
political asset of every candidate in all above-local elections.
Another interesting project would be the study of a comparison between: the discrepancy of opinions within the
party and belonging to a party as an asset in an electoral
campaign.
Another conclusion the project team came to related to
the exclusive character of the application. It became evident during the project that quite possibly a number of internauts did not use Glosuje.com.pl because of their poor
knowledge of EU-related issues. The questions on the project form were relatively specific but yet targeted at an average newspaper reader. The questionnaire was designed to
deliver information about the candidates’ real knowledge in
specific fields but on the other hand it was not addressed
only to specialists in EU matters. In turn, the level of specificity could well have discouraged a large number of people
precisely because the questions assumed a certain level of
knowledge or interest in the EU on the part of the users.
The IPA research demonstrated that the general awareness
of the circumstances in which the EU works is little – for
instance only about half of the population realises that
there are elections to the European Parliament. It is also
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quite possible that those parties that did not regard a VAA
as a useful and effective way of presenting their candidates
were not counting on the votes of internet users and may
well have been privy to profiles of their voters as people
who were not particularly well informed about the EUrelated issues. Such parties might consider their electorate
more susceptible to other forms of promotion than to an
online application with a number of questions relating to
EU matters. The findings of the Glosuje.com.pl experience, in
accordance with the IPA findings, show clearly that there is
room for a more effective promotion of the EU in Poland.
Glosuje.com.pl was declared by the users to be of help, but
did it influence the turnout in the EP elections? There is
some probability that it did influence all its users. It would
be hard to prove, however, that it was crucial for the turnout over the whole country, as in comparison to the more
than 7,5 mln. voters who took part in the elections, just 44
thousand people (probably of those who in fact did attend
the EP elections but there is no real proof) turned to the
project for help or else in order to satisfy their curiosity.
The scale, therefore, is minimal. It was, nevertheless, a very
well designed tool for those who intended to go to vote
and were not sure whom to vote for and for all of those
hesitant voters, who declared they would have been persuaded to vote if they had been delivered more information
about the EP elections and candidates. Therefore the project did achieve its goals and can be considered a valuable
component of a turnout raising campaign.
A much more difficult question to answer is this: what
should be done in order to encourage people to take part in
the elections? Quite a large proportion of the society declared that they would take part in the elections if they
knew more about the candidates. On the other hand when
delivered a tool to find out more about the candidates, not
a large number of people did use it (compared to the total
of voters). From the accounts of the users we also learn
that they were influenced by mass-media campaigns and
especially film spots broadcast on Internet (mainly on
YouTube) and on the traditional television. There is no
precise data on this, but one has a sensation that the more
celebrities a campaign involved, the more attractive it was
for the “users”. Therefore the question of what to do in
order to raise the turnout next time returns: should it be
through developing tools which will enable voters to gain a
better knowledge of the candidates or should it rather be
through advertising – the way everything in the consumer
society is promoted and sold? One thing is certain: in order
to impact on the turnout in the EP elections significantly,
there would need to be developed an overarching information campaign on EU-related issues and high profile media
coverage of the matters under the regulation of the EU.
Some informed academic observers would maintain that
society has to be shown the mechanism of decision-making
in the EU and have explained the relevance of the EU institutions. It would not be enough to show the deal behind
the decisions – which is often the approach adopted by the
press – but to explain the relevance of the issue at stake and
educate society to follow the EU developments. So far this
knowledge is apparently reserved for the few while it seems
to be a major factor that could help to raise social participation in the next EP elections.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Voting Advice Applications in Europe: A
Comparison
LORELLA CEDRONI
12.1. A Framework for Analysis
Representative democracies are, above all, electoral democracies. The election is the main instrument to assert the
normative ideal of democracy. However, the vote is necessary, but it is not sufficient in order to realize a “true” democracy. The ballot is not enough to impose the intentions
of the constituents in the process of decisions making, and
often it does not express the authentic popular will. Indeed, in the majority of the cases the elections can even not
satisfy the minimal requisites of collective choices (Martelli,
1999).
Nevertheless the “electoral moment” continues to have a
great importance for citizens, and the analysis of electoral
behaviour remains at the core of political science. The electoral choice constitutes the final action of a long process
that is developed along a consensus-consent continuum, in
which the “consensus of opinion” (Sartori, 1997) constitutes the starting point of a process that carries the constituents to give their own “consent” to the governors (see
Figure 12.1).
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Lorella Cedroni
Figure 12.1 – The “consensus-consent continuum”
Source: Cedroni (2005)
I would like to focus on these two main steps of the
process, and their relation to voting advice applications
(VAAs), starting from the formation of the “consensus of
opinion” by constituents with respect to determined issues,
political formulas and programs of parties and candidates,
and moving to the act of voting in order to choose representatives. I think that along this continuum VAAs can play a
significant role in orientating the opinion and the choice of
citizens.
The act of voting is not simply a stimulus-reaction effect.
Many actors interact with the constituents, by means of
parties and media. Political parties are still the main actors
of the democratic processes, providing the interpretation
of the general interests and the three-dimensional issues of
politics (political, personal, and policy issues). The act of
voting is separate – even if consequence in the most of the
cases – from the act of opining. We can individuate the different steps of the processes of opinion, analyzing how
they are formed, and how they influence the political
agenda, looking both at some structural factors (long-run),
and contingent situations (short-run).
The way in which a climate of opinion is formed depends
on the level of correspondence between expectations of
Chapter Twelve – Voting Advice Applications in Europe: A Comparison
the constituents and the capacity of the candidates to find
proper solutions to some urgent problems.
Between “consensus of opinion” and “consent” there is a
gap, a difference of priority in the sense that joining a program, a slogan, and the image of a politician, does not imply automatically a vote for a candidate. Giovanni Sartori
wrote that the “consensus of the opinion” can be identified
with an idem sentire, a general feeling, a state of the public
that characterizes Western democracies, and this state is
more and more difficult to reach in the current media system (Sartori, 1997). Political scientists and sociologists generally make confusion between these two steps, and tend to
identify them, overlapping the two distinct phases of the
continuum. The “consensus of the opinion” does not coincide with the decision to go to vote and it is not already
“consent”. Between “adhesion” and “decision” there is a
long way, with several obstacles and interferences that the
constituents – with their needs, preferences, interests, and
expectations – try to exceed.
There are different social factors that intervene in order
to determine the “consensus of opinion” of the constituents. The citizen needs to be able to choose, and also to
decide whether voting or not. Along this continuum it does
not have much sense to distinguish the type of vote expressed by the electorate. The “consensus of opinion” is
the starting point of every kind of vote – being it an “identification”, “opinion”, or “impression” vote – as it is of abstention (Parisi and Pasquino, 1977).
The “identification vote” is expressed by the constituents
who place confidence in the success of a political party and
in such case their choices derive from the credence of a direct correspondence between the electoral success of a
party and the personal satisfaction. The relevant factor here
is party identification, which is typical of those voters who
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make reference to some pre-existing “subcultures”. In
most of the cases, voters are not informed on the various
positions of candidates and parties in order to make a
comparison between the programmatic party proposals.
The “identification vote” emphasizes the strong anchorage
to a pre-existent subculture giving back a profile of the
electorate – rather rigid – and disposed to reveal one’s own
identity and opinions through an “expressive vote”
(Cedroni, 2004).
Many authors have suggested however that nowadays
there are more and more voters who are likely to support
those parties that seem more similar to their political position or self-placement. The so-called “opinion vote” is
given by voters who choose programs and proposals made
by different political parties in competition, as a result of a
comparative evaluation. This kind of vote is made by those
subjects who are better integrated in the political system,
who are informed about the various positions of the different parties and have a propensity to change their own
choices in relation to the contingent situation and convenience, in each electoral competition. In this respect, VAAs
can facilitate this kind of voters in order to choose the
party that is in close proximity to their desires and expectations.
The “opinion vote” is different from the “impression
vote” that is formed on the basis of a little evidence. It is
especially in this case that VAAs can provide a significant
help, and in particular to those voters who are not integrated in the political system, but still have a strong propensity to vote and to participate to the electoral process.
We have spoken about constituents who believe “that a
party makes similar proposal to their positions…”. This is
an opinion too, that not necessarily finds evidence. VAAs
experiments give evidence of an elector’s proximity to a
certain party. I am not speaking about the rationality of the
vote, but of the fact that the vote is based on a subjective
credence, and not on objective beliefs; citizens choose
those parties or candidates that are considered more able to
resolve the problems of the country. The most important
thing, for the voter, is “to have got an idea”, a “personal
idea”, of a candidate, a party and/or a coalition.
Citizens know their expectations and needs, and their attitude regarding politics sufficiently; they concentrate their
attention on salient individuals and this “salience stimulus”
has a strong impact on the valuable perceptions (Manin,
1996). The “distinctness” of the candidates helps citizens
to choosing (Pizzorno, 1993). The electorate has, moreover, a propensity for selecting those candidates who are
perceived as different from the others (that is, superior to
every other citizen), and at the same time similar to the others; but cognitive requirements regard only the perceived superiority, and not the effective, exceptional qualities of the
candidates. The elective procedure, therefore, does not
guarantee that the political excellence will be selected; in a
representative democracy the electoral systems can only select representatives different from the electorate. In order to
attract the attention of the electorate and to provoke a
strong and positive judgment, the candidates must emerge.
In this way the relationship between the representative
and its constituents becomes a “personal” feature. The
consequence is that the “personal” character of the representation – typical of the classic parliamentarianism – is
emphasized (Calise, 2000), and the personality of the candidates in competition appears, therefore, a fundamental
element.
If voters’ choice is based on the personality of a candidate, and on the basis of his/her attitude, having no possibility for choosing on the basis of a political program, they
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indirectly confer a “power of prerogative” to the representatives. This “prerogative” is the power to decide not on
the basis of “promises” but rather on contingent factors.
For this reason, and in order to obtain votes, candidates
express only “generic” political issues. Their success will
depend on this “unspecific offer” in order to satisfy and
reach the greater number of preferences of the social
groups.
In this context, constituents are forced to go to the polls
under a “veil of ignorance”, for they are usually left with
little knowledge about the competence of the candidates,
and low information about the program of the parties.
Moreover the game of the expectations is not so flexible
regarding the policy issues. In this situation, voters are
pushed into a sort of “cognitive funnel” from which very
little information-keys leak in order to address their
choices. In this context of scarcity of information, VAAs
can easier address elector’s choices.
The aim of our research 1 (sponsored by the University of
Rome “SAPIENZA”, and carried out for three years), was
not to identify the coherence of preferences and choices; as the
different chapters in this volume have shown, the opinions
of the citizens may change – we would add: in better.
These applications provide a voter with an answer on
which party (or individual, in some cases) is going to represent his opinions and interests in the best way, once the
elections are over. Elections are not only political “rituals”,
they are “cognitive processes”; and the political representation is mainly a “social activity of interpretation” (Pizzorno,
1993). That is to say, an election does not immediately
produce political decisions.
1
“Ricerca di Ateneo Federato di Scienze delle politiche publiche e sanitarie”,
University of Rome, 2007-2009.
For this reason, opinion processes are fundamental in the
representative democracies and political analysts must pay
more attention to them in order to analyze how they are
generated, how much they influence the political agenda, as
well as the vote behaviour. In my opinion, voting advice
applications represent one of the best way to provide academics with a huge amount of innovative data to conduct
research on mass publics’ political behaviour. Recently, a
great academic interest has arisen on VAAs, and also politicians begin to consider these methods as a way to bridging the gap between government and citizens (see: Ladner
et al. in this volume).
12.2. VAAs and their users: Cognitive and Behavioural Effects
What emerges clearly from the preceding chapter is an
‘identikit’ of the typical VAA user. Without exceptions,
(s)he is young, highly educated and keenly interested in
politics. It would thus seem generational phenomena:
VAAs are conceived primarily for an internet public, and
youngsters are the most active on the web. At the same
time, modernization (Inglehart, 1977) and cognitive mobilization
(Dalton, 1984) theories predict younger cohorts to need
ever less partisan cues in order to decide their vote. In turn,
voters with no party identification (that is, predominantly
younger voters) will be the most likely to look for more
‘sophisticated’ political cues – such as the those provided
by VAAs on the basis of issue preference. Therefore VAAs
can provide a valuable advice to issue voters, by making
easier and cheaper the costs involved in getting informed
(see: Garzia in this volume). The problem is to see what
kind of difference VAAs make to the behaviour of voters.
First of all, VAA usage has been found to affect voters’
information-seeking behaviour (what we have labelled in the
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introduction as ‘cognitive dimension’ of political participation). As Marschall and Schmidt have shown in Chapter 4,
motivating users to gather more information can be relevant, since the “search for more information can serve to
increase one’s competences in understanding politics by affecting the extent and quality of individuals’ political activities”. According to our chapters’ findings, a substantial
proportion of users declare that playing the test convinced
them to collect further information about political matters
(60 percent in Germany; 50 percent in Switzerland; a lower
– yet significant – proportion in Finland and Italy).
What matters the most, however, it that VAAs have
demonstrated their ability to affect the vote itself, in both
quantitative (turnout) and qualitative (vote intention) terms.
Obviously, precondition of impact is the spread of their
usage. In this respect, we found (unsurprisingly) that VAAs
are mostly used in those countries (e.g., Belgium, Finland,
Switzerland, the Netherlands) characterized by proportional electoral systems, and thus a larger number of political parties represented in Parliament. The electoral system
further affect VAA usage through its ballot structure: hypothetically, the more a system is candidate-centred (a clear
case in point: Switzerland), the stronger should be the need
for guidance in the act of voting. According to our findings, Swiss and Finnish voters are comparatively the most
likely to use VAAs (e.g., proportion of users on the nation’s eligible voters).
With respect to VAA effects on turnout (quantitative dimension of voting behaviour) we find a correlation between the time elapsed since the appearance of VAAs on
the scene (that is, a VAA’s popularity) and its ability to
bring voters to the ballot. ‘Older’ VAAs (e.g., Dutch StemWijzer, Finnish Yleisradiossa, German Wahl-O-Mat) are also
those more likely to convince its users to turnout – even if
they did not intend to do so before playing the test. The effect in these countries approximates 10 percent (that is,
one respondent in ten declares to have been convinced by
the test, and only by the test, to take part in upcoming elections).
VAAs’ have demonstrated their capability to affect also
the qualitative dimension of voting behaviour – that is, the
vote choice itself. Once again, the magnitude of the effect
is proportional to both the popularity of a VAA among the
electorate and the number of political parties competing.
The strongest effects are found in Switzerland (where people vote for candidates and in big cantons can cast up to 34
preference votes!) and Finland – the two most candidatecentred systems in our maze. Strong effects are found in
the Netherlands as well, in virtue of the huge popularity of
the specific tool under analysis (StemWijzer) coupled with
the extreme proportionality of the Dutch electoral system.
Figures are indeed lower with respect to countries characterized by a smaller number of parties and higher political
polarization (e.g., Germany and Italy), or an enduring adherence of social cleavages and the vote (Belgium).
In sum, we believe that VAAs have become, and will increasingly be, important in the electoral landscape of Western democracies. As we hope to have shown, they can affect voters’ behaviour to a significant extent. Furthermore,
they are being used by growing numbers of voters; these
are young, highly educated and interested in political matters – that is, the cognitively mobilized, which, according to
modernization theory, we expect to keep growing. In addition, the process of partisan dealignment (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000) going on in Western societies leads us to hypothesize that VAAs will be important to an increasing
number of voters lacking partisan cues.
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12.3. Are we facing a new ‘electronic’ Leviathan?
The new technologies tend to make participation more
democratic; but they are modifying the relationship between citizens and representative institution, contributing
to transform the house/electronic platform into a permanent voting booth. The possession of the technological
dimension depends on the alphabetization and leads to the
reconstruction of the democratic procedures. If the rhetorical of communication tends to speak about electronic
citizenship (e-citizenship) one could say that those conditions belong to democracy “without adjectives” (Rodotà,
2004). For sure, technology cannot be the remedy to the
lack of participation, and it is necessary to introduce new
patterns of direct democracy in the contemporary political
systems in order to be part of the processes of decision
making.
VAAs demonstrate that the catastrophist prophecy made
by some scholars, of a world dominated by video-citizens
or sub-citizens who “choose without knowing” (Sartori,
1997) is falsified. In reality this electronic tool, as others,
could facilitate new forms of “deliberative democracy”
(Fishkin, 1991). The “electronic citizenship” is an ineluctable condition in our societies, and the VAA is its paradigma.
However, the asymmetric electronic alphabetization risks
to favour the processes of exclusion and therefore of reduction of democracy. On one side, the web seems to produce a constant and active relationship between citizens
and representatives, favouring a “continuous democracy”
that affords to improve the sporadic and intermittent relationship between constituents and elected in the modern
democracies. On the other side, the spreading of technologies in social life leads to emphasize the economic logic.
Besides, the risk of extended forms of social control is
made more consisting. Therefore, in order to make the
web – like any other form of technology – a democratic
tool we have to re-project new forms of citizenship within
contemporary democracies (Rodotà, 2004).
Many scholars share the vision that we are going towards
a system of “continuous democracy”, and we see that the
web is able to change power relationships definitively.
Thanks to internet, citizens can participate continuously,
shifting through a permanent consultation. However, the
opening of spaces of democracy and participation is not
automatic. There are also contraindications. The long
march towards the “continuous democracy” corresponds
to the crisis of the traditional social mediators of representative democracy (e.g., political parties, trade unions, Parliaments themselves). The risk implied by new technologies
is to focus on the “final step” of the decisions, when the
citizens are called to say ‘yes’ or ‘not’ (e.g. referendum) or
to deliberate on this or that issue, and to choose for a candidate. In such a way, the level of democracy and participation grow up, but the problem is not to associate the citizens to the final decision; rather, it is to associate them to
the other steps of the political agenda.
VAAs, on the other hand, give the possibility to make
questions and give answers that can be combined in the definitive solution. It is a step ahead towards a “continuous”
democracy, a permanent process of political participation.
257
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Voting Advice Applications in Europe

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