On this website you will find information about research on the Wahl-O-Mat as well as about its functioning and effects.

The Wahl-O-Mat is an online tool offered by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and has become a successful web project that helps to increase political participation and communication prior to elections on the European, the federal and the state level in Germany.

Since its first implementation for the 2002 German Federal Elections, the Wahl-O-Mat has become one of the most popular and famous online tools in Germany. Its initial success spurred new versions for the Federal Elections, the European Elections and nearly all elections on the State level. The Wahl-O-Mat for the 2021 German Federal Elections was used about 21.3 million times. 

Right from the beginning, the Wahl-O-Mat has been object of scientific research. In almost all versions of Wahl-O-Mat, the users have been asked why they use the Wahl-O-Mat and what effect using this tool might have on them. Furthermore, demographic data (age, education, level, etc.) has been collected. On this website, we present the results of these surveys.

Since 2014 there is a tool available for local elections called lokal-o-mat. You can find this project at www.lokal-o-mat.de.