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In the lead up to the 2016 election, many commentators argued that Donald Trump's personality and actions would encourage many voters to cross party lines or to stay home. That was emphatically not the case, with Republicans generally voting for Trump as they would any other GOP candidate. Using data from a Voting Advice Application, Diego Garzia and Lorenzo Cicchi write that while partisanship was important in the election, their initial results show that policy issues – such as the repeal of Obamacare – were important to voters as well.

Version of Record online: 24 OCT 2016 ; Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have experienced a great deal of success over the past decade, and are now used in many countries around the world. This editorial introduces a Special Issue resulting from a section of the 2015 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Montreal, organized by the ECPR's official VAA Research Network. It discusses the global spread and the popularity of these tools, addresses the history and different branches of VAA research, the current state of the art, and the remaining puzzles in the field. It also focuses attention on the wealth of research that is examining the effects of VAAs on political parties, candidates, and voters, as well as how VAA design choices affect the advice given to voters and their subsequent voting behavior. We hope this Special Issue will also highlight the potential of VAA-generated data for studying party positioning over time and across countries, allowing for comparative analyses of the characteristics and development of parties and party systems.

Previous studies have portrayed the personalization of politics as a consequence of the changes in the electoral market and the resulting transformations at the party level. However, empirical research has not reached a consensus on the extent to which this process has actually exerted its impact on citizens' voting calculus. Partisan identifications appear still central in voters' behavior, whereas party leader evaluations seem to play only a marginal role. This paper tries to examine the electoral consequences of the personalization of politics employing an alternative perspective. In particular, we concentrate on the role played by leader evaluations in shaping voters' feelings of identification with parties. Our case study focuses on the Italian case, a prototype of personalized parliamentary democracy. In the empirical section, we examine the ways in which leaders have influenced Italian voters' behavior in the last two decades. The results show that the electoral effect of party leaders (once the mediating effect of party identification is taken into account) has steadily increased during the time frame under analysis.

In recent years, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become a relevant object of political science research. The aim of this paper is to develop a map of the existing literature and to outline a research agenda for this increasingly relevant tool and its role within modern democracies. Starting point of the paper is the dissemination of VAAs in Europe, focusing on the differences and similarities between the main types of VAAs. After having outlined the reasons for the dramatic spread of VAAs among European countries and voters, we provide an overview on the existing VAA literature. We then present a comparative research agenda for the VAAs by identifying questions that could be posed to the tools and their role out of different analytical perspectives. In the conclusion, we bring forward the argument that VAAs might matter even more in the future, indicating the need for a coordinated research effort. ; Special Issue on Voting Advice Applications and State of the Art: Theory, Practice, and Comparative Insights

Previous studies have portrayed the personalization of politics as a consequence of the changes in the electoral market and the resulting transformations at the party level. However, empirical research has not reached a consensus on the extent to which this process has actually exerted its impact on citizens' voting calculus. Partisan identifications appear still central in voters' behavior, whereas party leader evaluations seem to play only a marginal role. This paper tries to examine the electoral consequences of the personalization of politics employing an alternative perspective. In particular, we concentrate on the role played by leader evaluations in shaping voters' feelings of identification with parties. Our case study focuses on the Italian case, a prototype of personalized parliamentary democracy. In the empirical section, we examine the ways in which leaders have influenced Italian voters' behavior in the last two decades. The results show that the electoral effect of party leaders (once the mediating effect of party identification is taken into account) has steadily increased during the time frame under analysis.

Previous studies have portrayed the personalization of politics as a consequence of the changes in the electoral market and the resulting transformations at the party level. However, empirical research has not reached a consensus on whether this process has actually exerted an impact on citizens' voting calculus. Long-term feelings of partisan attachment appear still central in voters' behavior, whereas party leader evaluations seem to play only a marginal role. This paper tries to examine the electoral consequences of the personalization of politics employing an alternative approach. In particular, we hypothesize that leader evaluations have become the key determinants of partisan ties at the individual level. We focus on the Italian case, a prototype of personalized parliamentary democracy. In the empirical section, we examine the ways in which leaders have influenced Italian voters' behavior in the last two decades. The results show that the electoral effect of party leaders (once the mediating effect of partisanship is taken into account) has steadily increased during the period under analysis. Adapted from the source document.

This chapter deals with persuasion processes in modern elections. It focuses on the impact of so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) that are becoming ever more popular among citizens in the Western world and beyond. By matching the political preferences of voters with the supply side (i.e., parties and candidates) in the campaign, these tools affect voters in several ways. Among others, they have a positive impact on turnout, as both observational and experimental studies could show. Furthermore, they trigger a process of self-persuasion, in which users reflect on the VAA-generated output in terms of partisan preferences, cognize these results, and change/reinforce their priors.

First Published online: 13 October 2014. First Online in issue 21 September 2016. ; This article provides an empirical assessment of the causal structure underlying the core dependent variable of electoral research (the vote) and two of its most notable predictors (partisanship and leader evaluations). A critical review of traditional models of voting highlights the need to account for the reciprocal relationship between the main predictors as well as for the potential feedback stemming from the dependent variable. In the light of these considerations, a new 'iron triangle' of electoral research would seem to take shape, with partisanship, leader evaluations and the vote tight to each other by a strong link of reciprocal causation. Making use of pre-/post-election surveys from Britain and Italy, the empirical analysis provides evidence for a strong effect of past behavior on political attitudes. However, past behavior seems to exert its effect mainly on partisan attitudes, whereas party leader evaluations appear only slightly affected. The results point to the considerably weakened role of partisanship as attitudinal anchor of vote choice. Leader evaluations, on the contrary, emerge as a crucial component in the voting decision.