Voting Advice Applications and electoral turnout

In the last two decades Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become popular tools among voters, especially in several countries with a multi-party system. In this paper we test if the use of VAAs stimulates electoral participation. We use survey data from the Netherlands, where such tools are widely used. In order to overcome methodological problems of earlier studies, we use techniques that model the effect of confounding variables as a problem of selection into the treatment (VAA usage). We estimate that VAA usage accounted for about four per cent of the reported turnout in the election. The mobilising effect was largest among groups that typically vote in relatively small numbers, such as young voters and those less knowledgeable about politics