How Many People Use Voting Advice Applications? Survey Evidence From 15 Democracies Worldwide

Diego Garzia and Frederico Ferreira da Silva
Additional contact information
Diego Garzia: Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Switzerland / Department of Political and Social Sciences, Bologna University, Italy
Frederico Ferreira da Silva: Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Politics and Governance, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: In this short note, we offer an update on previous assessments of voting advice application (VAA) usage with representative samples from National Election Studies in established democracies worldwide. We map the spread of VAAs among the voting population in those countries in which post-election surveys asked their respondents whether they had used VAAs during the national election campaign. Our empirical base encompasses data from 48 elections held in 15 countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland) between 2003 and 2024. Beyond mapping VAA usage over time, our analysis focuses on the (potentially changing) individual-level correlates of VAA usage in a longitudinal perspective. The findings show a continuous increase in VAA usage figures in a large majority of the countries under analysis, but also provide little evidence of changes in the sociodemographic composition of the population of VAA users.

Keywords: diffusion theory; national election studies; survey data; voting advice applications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/11347 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v14:y:2026:a:11347

DOI: 10.17645/pag.11347

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().