Quantitative Research Study on Special Voting Rules 2019

Special Ballot Voters
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Prepared for:
Elections Canada
Office of the Chief Electoral Officer

Supplier name:
Advanis Inc.

Contract number: 05005-190331/001/CY

Contract value: $35,030 incl taxes

Award date: July 18, 2019

Delivery date: January 21, 2020

Registration number: POR 036-19

For more information on this report, please contact Elections Canada at rop-por@elections.ca

Ce rapport est aussi disponible en français.

Executive Summary

As part of its post-mortems following general elections, Elections Canada seeks to obtain reliable survey data to evaluate electors' opinions, attitudes, and knowledge of the Agency's services along with various aspects of their experience with the electoral process. The Agency also asks campus administrators to share their experiences hosting voting places at post-secondary institutions. The Quantitative Research Study on Special Voting Rules 2019 project is made up of three separate surveys:

• the Survey of Campus Electors
• the Survey of Special Ballot Voters
• the Survey of Campus Administrators

This report describes the methodology of the Survey of Special Ballot Voters.

The target population was Canadian electors who voted by special ballot during the 2019 federal general election. This includes electors who voted in the following ways:

• by mail (living within or outside of Canada)
• on campus at a post-secondary institution
• at an acute care hospital
• at a designated polling station for Canadian Forces electors
• at an Elections Canada office

Elections Canada designed the survey, which included questions around the following themes:

1. awareness of the election and the different voting methods (including where, when, and the ways to vote)
2. sources of information about the election
3. reasons for using or not using different methods of voting
4. experiences with using different voting methods (including time it took to vote, ease of voting, satisfaction with voting)
5. socio-demographics and characteristics of target populations

After survey design and programming were complete, individuals who voted by special ballot were provided with a bilingual postcard that contained access information to the survey hosted by Advanis, using the Elections Canada website. While the postcard was supplied to a large number of special ballot voters, due to a shortage of postcards not all received an invitation to the survey. Elections Canada assembled a total of 85,373 voter kits for mail-in voters; 51,700 survey postcards were available. This resulted in a shortage of around 34,000 postcards for mail-in voters. Of the 51,700 individuals who received the postcard, 3,512 respondents completed the survey. The survey was in field from September 16 to November 4, 2019.

After closing the survey, Advanis was responsible for cleaning and preparing the survey data, which was provided to Elections Canada in SPSS format. Elections Canada completed all open-ended coding. Tabulated data were produced for this study; results were categorized and presented by demographic information such as age, gender, level of education, employment status, language, and region. Results were also tabulated by subpopulation groups such as the following:

• Indigenous populations
• electors who did or did not vote in the 2015 election
• people who were or were not eligible to vote in 2015
• people with a functional disability

Finally, results were tabulated by level of interest in politics and the voting method they used in the 2019 election (if applicable). There is a potential for non-response bias, as response rates can vary by the type of special ballot voting method used and among electors with certain demographic characteristics. To adjust for this possible source of error, Advanis weighted the data to reflect the composition of the sampling frame on the main known characteristics. The results of this survey will be used to inform future Elections Canada programs and services as they relate to special ballot voters.

Political Neutrality Certification

I hereby certify as Senior Officer of Advanis that the deliverables fully comply with the Government of Canada political neutrality requirements outlined in the Policy on Communications and Federal Identity and the Directive on the Management of Communications.

Specifically, the deliverables do not include information on electoral voting intentions, political party preferences, standings with the electorate, or ratings of the performance of a political party or its leaders.

Signed,

Nicolas Toutant

Vice-President, Research and Evaluation

Advanis