Is issue voting solely based on issues? Latent factors of political ideology in response patterns of voting advice applications

Abstract In recent years, an increase in issue voting has been observed, which is further facilitated by voting advice applications (VAAs) that inform users about the structure of the political contest in terms of their own preferences. Nevertheless, some response patterns seem to occur more frequently in VAAs than others, which could indicate ideological influences. To investigate this, we aggregated N = 5963 datasets of the German VAA Wahl-O-Mat (WoM) from three consecutive legislature periods and extracted latent factors using multiple correspondence analysis. Results show that the latent factors across all legislature periods were highly associated with dispositional traits related to political ideology, i.e., right-wing authoritarianism, social-dominance orientation, and moral foundations. In addition, the validity of the latent factors was demonstrated intertemporally, at the voter group level and at the content level, suggesting that political ideology even plays a role in issue voting. Importantly, the underlying ideological structure was more predictive for voting decisions than individual issue stances. We discuss the risks of this observation for democratic systems since predefined sets of political opinions might narrow the political debate, ultimately leading to greater polarization and disenchantment with politics.