Closing the information gap in competitive authoritarian regimes? The effect of voting advice applications

Abstract

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are used in elections across the globe and offer voters nonpartisan information about political parties, candidates, and policy issues. Several studies suggest that VAAs affect vote choice as well as political knowledge. However, despite the vast literature on VAAs, online voting advice technology's impact on authoritarian regimes, where the cost of accessing expert advice is much higher than in democracies, remains unknown. In this study, we present results from a randomized experiment that evaluates the effects of a VAA intervention on voter attitudes and choices in Turkey—a typical competitive authoritarian regime where elections take place, but the rules are skewed in favor of the regime. We embedded a VAA intervention in a face-to-face panel survey conducted before and after the 2019 local elections in Istanbul, Turkey. Using a representative sample of Turkish adults in Istanbul, we randomly assigned half of the participants to our VAA intervention consisting of exposure to their political standing on a two-dimensional map of political candidates. Our analysis demonstrates that the VAA intervention influences candidate choice, mainly among centrist voters. However, these effects are short-term and dissipate within two months.