Voting advice applications and party choice: evidence from ...

Voting advice applications and party choice 379
Figure 1 Predicted probabilities for vote change for influenced vs. not-influenced smartvote
users based on specific values for age (see online version for colours)
Predicted Probabilities for Vote Change
.2 .3 .4 .5 .6
20 30 40 50 60 70
Age
Not influenced
Influenced
95% CI
95% CI
Source: NCCR “Democracy”, IP16 “smart-voting 2.0” (http://www.nccr-democracy.
uzh.ch/research/module5/smart-voting/smart-voting). Author’s calculations.
Note: Predicted probabilities for vote change among those who were influenced and
those who were not influenced at specific values for age, averaged over the
remaining covariates.
Figure 1 illustrates that young voters who were influenced by the voting recommendations
have a higher probability than older voters to change their vote choices. Moreover, the
probability of swing-voting is higher among those who were influenced by the voting
recommendations than among those who were not influenced in their vote choices. The
confidence intervals around the point estimates indicate that the difference between the
two groups is significant, with the exception of the age groups of 60 and 70. This is most
likely due to the small sample size in these categories, which make a precise estimation
more difficult (indicated by the larger confidence intervals). The exact values of the point
estimates are not relevant in this context since they are dependent and vary according to
the values set for the covariates. We are interested only in the differences and
significance of the point estimates, which, in our case, remain stable even if we specify
different values for the remaining covariates. In sum, the estimated model indicates that
the probability for swing voting is higher among those smartvote users who indicated that
they were influenced by the voting recommendations and more so for younger users than
for older users.