Presented at VAA Research – State of the Art and Perspectives Schloss Mickeln, Düsseldorf, March 2-3, 2012

1. Lessons Learnt from Greece -
Analysis of the First Greek VAA
Andreadis I., Chadjipadelis Th.
Department of Political Sciences,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Greece

2. Outline of the paper
• Data quality
– Data cleaning
– Users’ demographic characteristics
• How do they select candidates?
– Any evidence of “pure” issue voting?
• Impact of VAAs on vote choice
– It depends on the confidence level of initial
selection
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and Perspectives

3. Helpmevote popularity – sample
size
• Helpmevote: First Greek VAA – It was
used for the Greek Regional Elections of
2010
• In 20 days (18/10/2010 - 7/11/2010) more
than 28,000 users
• 3 ways to collect information:
– Position on issues (all users)
– Personal information (after the issues, 21000)
– Web survey after the use of VAA (5000)
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and Perspectives

4. Data quality – Data Cleaning
• Time spent to answer each question is less than
one second
– The user did not have enough time to read,
understand and give a substantial answer to the
question
• The pattern of answers
– The user has clicked the same button (e.g. "Totally
agree" for all (or almost all) the questions
• The final cleaned version of the dataset includes
28014
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and Perspectives

5. Representative sample? Sex
70,0%
60,0%
50,0%
40,0%
Sample
Census
30,0%
20,0%
10,0%
0,0%
Male Female
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and Perspectives

6. Representative sample? Age and
Region
• Age groups 50-64 and 65+ are
underrepresented
– 14.1% and 1.9% instead of 21.7% and 21%
• Age group 25-49 is overrepresented
– 71.4% instead of 46%
• Athens and Thessaloniki are
overrepresented
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and Perspectives

7. Representative education level?
60,0%
50,0%
40,0%
Sample
30,0%
Census
20,0%
10,0%
0,0%
Primary Lower Higher Tertiary Postgraduate
secondary secondary studies
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and Perspectives

8. Factors of vote choice
Candidate with Other
maximum Candidate
proximity
coefficient
Candidate 39.1% 39.4%
backed by the
party
Other 3.9% 17.6%
Candidate
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and Perspectives

9. Impact on vote choice
• Depends on whether the VAA user had chosen
a candidate before using the application.
• Undecided > VAA can help them learn the
positions of candidates and choose the most
suitable to represent them.
• Decided > two possible outcomes:
– i) identical voting recommendation > strengthen the
user's intent to vote for the preselected candidate
– ii) VAA does not propose the same candidate > the
VAA recommendation could undermine user's initial
selection, and if the influence is strong enough, it can
lead to change of voter's position.
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and Perspectives

10. Undecided voters (38,5%)
Total sample Intention to
abstain before
N % N %
Have selected a candidate 591 31.1% 24 5.1%
after helpmevote
Have not selected a 1311 68.9% 443 94.9%
candidate after
Total 1902 100% 467 100%
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and Perspectives

11. VAA proposed the same candidate (%)
by confidence level of initial choice
60%
VAA proposed the same candidate (%)
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Not at all A little Quite Very Completely
Confidence level about the pre-selected candidate
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and Perspectives

12. Confidence level about the candidate
before and after using VAA
50%
45%
40%
Users in each category (%)
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Not at all A little Quite Very Completely
Confidence level about the selected candidate
Before VAA After VAA
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and Perspectives

13. Different Candidate: level of
affection by confidence level
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Quite or less Very Completely
Confidence level about the pre-selected candidate
Not at all A little Quite or more
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and Perspectives

14. Intention to change vote choice
and follow VAA by conf. level
35%
30%
Change mind and follow VAA (%)
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Not at all A little Quite Very Completely
Confidence level about the pre-selected candidate
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and Perspectives

15. Conclusions (1/2)
• The sample is not representative of the electorate.
– We cannot use the data collected for the estimation of the
electoral outcome
• 4 out of 10 voters base their vote choice mainly on their
party identification
– They have selected the candidate who is supported by their
party, although he/she is not the candidate with whom they have
the maximum SDC.
• 4 out of 100 voters have selected the candidate with
whom they have the maximum SDC although he/she
was not supported by their party “pure issue voters?”
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and Perspectives

16. Conclusions (2/2)
• VAAs can help undecided voters to
choose candidates
• May even influence decided voters by:
– proposing the same candidate and affirming
their initial choice or
– undermining their confidence in their initial
selection by proposing a different candidate.
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and Perspectives