| Netpolitique : VoteMatch
–or StemWijzer
in its original version- started in the Netherlands,
and has now been tested in Germany, Switzerland and
Bulgaria. Can you tell us a bit about the results of
your latest experience, in Germany, with the “Wahl-O-Mat
2005”?
Jochum de Graaf : The Wahl-O-Mat
2005 was launched on the 26th of August and did
reach by election day 25th of September 5.13 million
recommendations, users that completed the test.
Netpolitique.net : VoteMatch may seem like a
gadget at first sight, but the questions are quite
elaborate. How do you proceed to design the questionnaire?
Jochum de Graaf : The questionaire of the Wahl-O-Mat,
as of any voting test based on the original StemWijzer
method, is developed in a couple of workshops where
a central redaction first does formulate a longlist
of theses that will be sent to the parties. The parties
do answer these, say 50 to 60, theses by their party
opinions. On bases of these answers and objective, statistical
criteria a final list of 25 to 30 theses will be composed
in a second workshop. The test is based on the city
block method, the shortest distance between two points.
The profiles of the political parties (the answers to
all theses) are compared with the profile of the user,
the party with the shortest distance to the user will
be on top in the ranking of recommended parties.
Netpolitique.net : Do you think it has had a significant
impact on voters in the countries that have experimented
with it, in terms of political education, participation
or even voting decision?
Jochum de Graaf : StemWijzer and Wahl-O-Mat have
been accompanied by online
research over the years. Most important results
of these surveys (by the University of Tilburg, the
Netherlands and University of Duesseldorf, Germany on
the European elections 2004):
- More than two-third of the respondents do use the
test to discuss the result and the theses with family,
friends, on the job, in the cafe, restaurant and so
on;
- About three quarter of the users did get a result
that matches their political preference; one third did
get a direct recommendation for the party they expected
or do belong to, another 40 to 50 percent did get a
recommendation for the 'political family'.
- Some 5 to 10 procent of the users did change
their vote on behalf of the test.
- Around 15 percent of the users did have no
intention to vote, after doing the test they yet decided
to go voting
These results do perfectly match our main goals, which
are educational: to stimulate the knowledge of the differences
and agreements between political parties and to support
the voters in making a choice in election times.
Netpolitique.net : Do you have plans to roll
it out in other countries? Would France be a suitable
country for instance?
Jochum de Graaf : We are consequently looking
for other countries to roll out our method. At the moment
I do have warm, interesting contacts in Ukraine, Hungary
and Mexico, countries where there will be elections
in 2006. In Japan there is a working group of scientists
that will try and realise the tool one of the coming
years. But the accent for our institute, IPP, the Dutch
Centre for Political Participation, will be on the EU-memberstates.
And yes, naturallement, France would be a very suitable
country having its own voting test, le VotoMetre. I
would like to get into contact with an ondependent non-partial
organisation en France to cooperate with en cas des
elections pour l' Assemblee Nationale en 2007 (ou d'ailleurs).
Netpolitique.net : Last but not least, our ritual
question: what are your 3 favorite sites/blogs ?
Jochum de Graaf :
The ActionNetwork, set up by the BBC with the subtitle
'Change the world around you' :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/
The homepage of the Dutch version of Wikipedia, from
where you can go all over the world
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
Ex-aequo, Google
NL et Google
Earth from where you can explore the world in any
format, texts, images, plans, and more.
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