smartvote.lu: Usage and impact of the first VAA in Luxembourg

This paper analyses the electoral usage and impact of smartvote.lu,
the first Voting Advice Application (VAA) introduced in Luxembourg at the
occasion of the 2009 national elections. We devise a series of expectations
regarding the use and impact of the instrument and provide both descriptive
and multivariate analyses on data drawn from a ‘classical’ post-electoral survey
representative of all voters. Despite the need for studies using this type of
empirical material and multivariate methods to draw valid lessons on the
determinants of VAA use and the potential electoral impact of these devices,
such a combination is still rare in the nascent literature on VAAs, and arguably
allows us to make a valuable contribution to it. Our main finding is that the
most educated are more likely to use the VAAs but less likely to be influenced
by it.