Digital voting aid: This is how young voters find their local favorites!

Digital voting aid: This is how young voters find their local favorites!

On August 4, 2025, the digital voting aid “Local Election Navi” was presented, which is intended to help voters in North Rhine-Westphalia prepare for the upcoming local elections on September 14, 2025. This voting aid, which is provided by the NRW School of Governance developed by the University of Duisburg-Essen in cooperation with the University of Münster, aims to inform voters about the positions of the parties.

With the “local election navigation system” citizens have the opportunity to compare their own political attitudes with the parties’ offers. The platform is used in eight cities: Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen, Bochum, Cologne as well as Münster, Bielefeld and Paderborn. The latter cities can use the application from August 4, 2025, while Cologne will not be available until mid-August 2025.

Development and structure of the “local election navigation system”

The idea behind this digital voting aid came about in a theses workshop that took place on July 3, 2025. Around 60 students from the two universities involved worked on questions about local policy issues. These theses were then presented to the candidate parties and electoral alliances for their response. The focus was on both specific local issues and overarching concerns such as education, transport and housing.

The development of the “Local Election Navi” was carried out by a team led by Dr. Julia Schwanholz, Raphael Moser, M.A., Dr. Ray Hebestreit and Prof. Dr. Norbert Kersting pushed forward. The parties' answers are carefully checked and only relevant theses are included in the platform. This ensures that the information provided can actually support and inform voters.

Functionality and target group

The “local election navigation system” asks its users to answer 30 local political theses one after the other. These can be rated as “agree”, “neutral” or “disagree”. Users who are not sure can also skip theses; these are not taken into account when calculating the results. At the end, users have the opportunity to assign weights to the theses that are most important to them.

After users enter their answers, they can select the parties with whom they would like to settle. The platform then shows the correspondence between its own settings and those of the parties. In addition, the parties' justifications for their answers can be viewed, which increases transparency and supports an informed voting decision.

Loud Lokal-o-mat.de It has been proven in the past that voting aids such as the “local election navigation system” can promote voter participation, especially among young and undecided voters. Local politics has a direct impact on the living environment of citizens, which is why this initiative is of great importance for democratic participation in North Rhine-Westphalia.