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.