Swing voting due to smartvote use? evidence from the 2011 swiss federal elections

Abstract

Almost every fifth voter in Switzerland visited the Voting Advice Application (VAA) smartvote prior to casting a ballot in the 2011 Swiss federal elections. Surveys among users reveal that the web application led voters to discover suitable candidates or parties which they previously would not have considered. The subsequent question therefore is whether the VAA initiates a change in party choice among voters. In this paper, we examine whether voters who used smartvote were more likely to swing vote in the 2011 elections than non-users. Moreover, we take a look at which parties might have benefited from a voter flow among smartvote users. We employ both selection models and propensity score matching for tracing the causal effect of smartvote use on party choice. According to our results, smartvote users were significantly more likely to swing vote in the elections. Voter migration among smartvote users was most prominent towards the Green Liberal Party, one of the two major winners of the 2011 Swiss federal elections.