IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_8868.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Voting Advice Applications Change Political Behavior?

Author

Listed:
  • Christine Benesch
  • Rino L. Heim
  • Mark Schelker
  • Lukas D. Schmid

Abstract

We analyze how the introduction of the voting advice application smartvote in Switzerland affects voter turnout, voting behavior, and electoral outcomes. The Swiss context offers an ideal setting to identify the causal effects of voting advice applications using real-world aggregate data because smartvote was introduced in different cantons at different points in time. We find that smartvote does not affect turnout but that voters more actively select candidates instead of parties by splitting their ballot. Our findings suggest that no specific party seems to benefit from the change in voting behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Christine Benesch & Rino L. Heim & Mark Schelker & Lukas D. Schmid, 2021. "Do Voting Advice Applications Change Political Behavior?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8868, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8868
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8868.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oliver Falck & Robert Gold & Stephan Heblich, 2014. "E-lections: Voting Behavior and the Internet," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2238-2265, July.
    2. Petrova, Maria, 2011. "Newspapers and Parties: How Advertising Revenues Created an Independent Press," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 790-808, November.
    3. Ernesto Calvo & Timothy Hellwig, 2011. "Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives under Different Electoral Systems," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 27-41, January.
    4. Clément de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultfœuille, 2020. "Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2964-2996, September.
    5. Alessandro Gavazza & Mattia Nardotto & Tommaso Valletti, 2019. "Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 2092-2135.
    6. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2011. "Ideological Segregation Online and Offline," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1799-1839.
    7. David Dreyer Lassen, 2005. "The Effect of Information on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 103-118, January.
    8. Athey, Susan & Imbens, Guido W., 2022. "Design-based analysis in Difference-In-Differences settings with staggered adoption," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 62-79.
    9. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    10. David Card & Enrico Moretti, 2007. "Does Voting Technology Affect Election Outcomes? Touch-screen Voting and the 2004 Presidential Election," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 660-673, November.
    11. Andrew Goodman-Bacon, 2018. "Difference-in-Differences with Variation in Treatment Timing," NBER Working Papers 25018, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Thomas Fujiwara, 2015. "Voting Technology, Political Responsiveness, and Infant Health: Evidence From Brazil," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 423-464, March.
    13. Callaway, Brantly & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C., 2021. "Difference-in-Differences with multiple time periods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 200-230.
    14. Arianna Degan & Antonio Merlo, 2011. "A Structural Model Of Turnout And Voting In Multiple Elections," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 209-245, April.
    15. Matthew Gentzkow, 2006. "Television and Voter Turnout," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 931-972.
    16. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2011. "Overcoming Ideological Bias in Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(2), pages 183-211.
    17. Lupia, Arthur, 1992. "Busy Voters, Agenda Control, and the Power of Information," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(2), pages 390-403, June.
    18. Lupia, Arthur, 1994. "Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 63-76, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Enami, Ali & Alm, James & Aranda, Rodrigo, 2021. "Labor versus capital in the provision of public services: Estimating the marginal products of inputs in the production of student outcomes✰," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Jovet, Yoann & Lefèvre, Frédéric & Laurent, Alexis & Clausse, Marc, 2022. "Combined energetic, economic and climate change assessment of heat pumps for industrial waste heat recovery," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    2. Milena Djourelova & Ruben Durante & Gregory J. Martin, 2021. "The Impact of Online Competition on Local Newspapers: Evidence from the Introduction of Craigslist," CESifo Working Paper Series 9090, CESifo.
    3. Poy, Samuele & Schüller, Simone, 2016. "Internet and Voting in the Web 2.0 Era: Evidence from a Local Broadband Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 9991, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Cagé, Julia, 2017. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation: Evidence from French Local Newspapers and Elections, 1944," CEPR Discussion Papers 12198, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Kurt Schmidheiny & Sebastian Siegloch, 2023. "On event studies and distributed‐lags in two‐way fixed effects models: Identification, equivalence, and generalization," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 695-713, August.
    6. Bhattacharjee, Arnab & Aravena, Claudia & Castillo, Natalia & Ehrlich, Marco & Taou, Nadia & Wagner, Thomas, 2022. "Agroforestry Programs in the Colombian Amazon: Selection, Treatment and Exposure Effects on Deforestation," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 537, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    7. Hoffman, Mitchell & León, Gianmarco & Lombardi, María, 2017. "Compulsory voting, turnout, and government spending: Evidence from Austria," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 103-115.
    8. Diogo G. C. Britto & Paolo Pinotti & Breno Sampaio, 2022. "The Effect of Job Loss and Unemployment Insurance on Crime in Brazil," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1393-1423, July.
    9. Rösner, Anja & Haucap, Justus & Heimeshoff, Ulrich, 2020. "The impact of consumer protection in the digital age: Evidence from the European Union," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    10. Sumit Agarwal & Slava Mikhed & Barry Scholnick & Man Zhang, 2022. "Reducing Strategic Default in a Financial Crisis," Working Papers 21-36, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    11. Bruno Ferman, 2023. "Inference in difference‐in‐differences: How much should we trust in independent clusters?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 358-369, April.
    12. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cage & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," Working Papers hal-03393063, HAL.
    13. Tamara Bischof & Boris Kaiser, 2021. "Who cares when you close down? The effects of primary care practice closures on patients," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 2004-2025, September.
    14. Junze Sun & Arthur Schram & Randolph Sloof, 2019. "A Theory on Media Bias and Elections," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-048/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cage & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393063, HAL.
    16. Peter Z. Schochet, 2021. "Statistical Power for Estimating Treatment Effects Using Difference-in-Differences and Comparative Interrupted Time Series Designs with Variation in Treatment Timing," Papers 2102.06770, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    17. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cage & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," SciencePo Working papers hal-03393063, HAL.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ec86lkes59hv9tfv77ld1p5fr is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Francesco Sobbrio, 2014. "The political economy of news media: theory, evidence and open issues," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 13, pages 278-320, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Mac Clay, Pablo & Börner, Jan & Sellare, Jorge, 2023. "Institutional and macroeconomic stability mediate the effect of auctions on renewable energy capacity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    21. Godefroy, Raphael & Henry, Emeric, 2016. "Voter turnout and fiscal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 389-406.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    elections; information; internet;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8868. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.