Abstract

VAAs are increasingly popular online tools providing voters with information during electoral campaigns. This seminar will introduce you to Smarwielen, a candidate-based VAA most recently deployed for the 2023 national election in Luxembourg (it had already been in place for the 2009, 2013 and 2018 national elections as well as for the 2009, 2014 and 2019 European elections). It will showcase three ongoing research projects using VAAs’ general set-up and data, as well as the specificities of Smartwielen in combination with other data collection instruments. A first project uses Smartwielen’ pre-electoral party positions to predict the partisan composition of the coalition government formed after the election. A second one uses Smartwielen’s pre-electoral candidate positions in combination with a post-electoral survey of candidates as well as a voters’ survey to study politicians’ perception of public opinion. The third project, which is supported by an FNR Mobility In grant, builds on a panel survey of voters with an embedded experiment and aims at measuring the impact of VAA use on voter behaviour.