Introduction

Elections Canada commissioned Phoenix Strategic Perspectives Inc. (Phoenix SPI) and Advanis to conduct research to help evaluate the 44th federal general election.

1. Background and Objectives

Elections Canada (EC) is an independent, non-partisan agency that reports directly to Parliament. The agency is mandated to conduct federal general elections, by-elections and referendums; administer the political financing provisions of the Canada Elections Act; monitor compliance; and conduct public information campaigns on the electoral process.

In the context of a federal general election (GE), EC conducts studies of electors that are used as part of the evaluation and development of EC's programs and services and to inform the Chief Electoral Officer's reports to Parliament.

The 2021 National Electors Study (NES) is EC's primary public opinion research study conducted for the 44th GE held on September 20, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The NES measures electors' values, opinions and attitudes toward various election-related issues; their knowledge of, expectations toward and experience with the electoral process, including their views on the health and safety of voting in relation to the pandemic; and their satisfaction with the agency's communications, services and programs.

The NES consisted of two components: 1) a national longitudinal survey of electors, and 2) a series of post-election focus groups and interviews.

This report presents results from the survey and focus groups used to evaluate EC's voter information campaign for the 44th GE and to measure electors' knowledge and awareness of the voting process in terms of:

• recall and evaluation of advertising and communications from the voter information campaign
• satisfaction with information received about when, where and the ways to vote in the election
• knowledge of various aspects of the electoral process, including voter registration, voter identification, the different ways to vote, and health and safety measures put in place for voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic
• awareness and perceptions of Elections Canada as the authoritative source of information about the electoral process

2. Methodology

A brief overview of the 2021 NES quantitative and qualitative methodologies is provided in this section. A detailed description of the research methodologies, including the research instruments and the campaign materials tested, can be found under separate cover.

2.1: Quantitative Methods

Public opinion surveys were conducted by telephone (via live interviewers) and online (via Advanis' online survey platform) between August and October 2021, in two survey waves. All respondents were eligible electors—Canadian citizens who were at least 18 years of age on election day (September 20, 2021). The questionnaires varied in length, from nine to 19 minutes.

The survey component included longitudinal, top-up and discrete samples. The sample sources used included:

The table below presents technical information about each wave of surveying:

The W1 election period survey was fielded as a rolling cross-section and divided into five phases. Questions changed based on the survey date to correspond with milestones in the election period and advertising phases in the voter information campaign, as follows:

• August 16 ² to August 22: Early election phase (W1a)
• August 23 to August 30: Registration phase (W1b)
• August 31 to September 6: Voter information card phase (W1c)
• September 7 to September 13: Early voting phase (W1d)
• September 14 to September 19: Election day phase (W1e)

The W1 and W2a surveys were in part used to measure recall of Elections Canada's voter information campaign through the inclusion of questions from the Government of Canada Advertising Campaign Evaluation Tool (ACET).

The survey data have been weighted to correspond to the demographic composition of the full population of electors. Weighting was done in two stages: 1) adjustments for factors related to the study design, the in-scope rate, non-response and household size, followed by 2) post-stratification/calibration to align the results with known population characteristics of age, gender and province/territory.

The inclusion of the non-probability web panel (to augment the sample size of First Nations people living on a reserve) means no estimate of sampling error can be calculated for the entire longitudinal sample, and results are not statistically projectable to the entire elector population. A margin of sampling error and statistical estimations can be obtained if the panel completions are excluded and only the random samples are considered, in which case all samples are of a size such that overall results across all waves would have had a margin of sampling error less than ±1%, 19 times out of 20. The margins of error for subsamples would be larger.

2.2: Qualitative Methods

Qualitative research was conducted with 133 eligible electors as follows:

• Between October 18 and 27, 2021, 14 virtual focus groups were conducted with electors residing in the following locations: Halifax and surrounding areas (two groups: students and the general public), Atlantic Canada (one group: electors with a mobility impairment), Montreal and surrounding areas (three groups, conducted in French: the general public, students and new Canadians), the Greater Toronto Area (three groups: new Canadians, Indigenous electors and electors with a visual impairment), Winnipeg and surrounding areas (two groups: youth who are not in education, employment or training; and Indigenous electors) and Metro Vancouver, including Vancouver Island (three groups: the general public, new Canadians and electors with a hearing impairment).
  • These groups lasted 90 minutes and included a mix of participants by age, gender, employment status and education.
• Five in-depth telephone interviews were conducted between October 26 and 27, 2021, with electors who have mental health conditions or cognitive disabilities.
  • Interviews lasted approximately 40 minutes and were conducted with a mix of participants by gender, age and region of residence.

All participants were paid an honorarium to thank them for taking part in the research. Electors with visual or mobility impairments were paid $150; all other participants were paid $100.

The moderators for this study were Philippe Azzie and Alethea Woods. Both contributed to the preparation of the final report.

3. Notes to the Reader

• The survey research relies on self-reported voter turnout, which historically is overreported in public opinion surveys: in this survey, self-reported turnout was 93%, while the turnout rate for the 44th GE among registered electors was 62.6%. A limitation of this current research, therefore, is that it overrepresents voters in the survey sample. Two factors may be responsible for the overrepresentation of voters: 1) people who vote may be more likely than non-voters to participate in a study about voting, particularly across multiple survey waves (response bias), and 2) people who did not vote may report that they voted in order to present themselves in a more positive light (social desirability bias).
• The term elector denotes research participants who were eligible to vote in the 44th GE (all survey respondents). The term voter denotes research participants who reported that they voted in the 44th GE.
• This report identifies measures of respondent recall, awareness and knowledge based on aided or unaided questions. Aided questions include additional information that can help respondents answer the question, such as a list of suggested answers to a knowledge question or a visual of an advertising piece for a recall question. Unaided questions provide limited information in an attempt to avoid leading respondents' answers, such as by asking an open-ended question with no suggested answers. Aided measures tend to produce higher levels of recall, awareness and knowledge among respondents than unaided measures.
• All results are expressed as percentages, unless otherwise noted. Percentages may not always add up to 100% due to rounding or multiple mentions.
• The number of respondents varies where questions were asked of subsamples of the survey population and during different survey waves.
• Statistically significant reporting includes a variety of demographic, behavioural and attitudinal variables. Particular subgroups were defined as follows:
  • Electors with a disability: These respondents were identified using a functional disability approach based on reported difficulty with various activities, combined to a single measure of overall level of disability, on a scale ranging from no disability to mild to very severe disability.
  • Indigenous electors: Electors who self-identified as First Nations, Inuit or Métis.
  • New Canadians: Immigrants to Canada who became citizens after the 42nd GE, held in 2015.
  • Students: Students between the ages of 18 and 34 years who were (or planned to be) attending school at a secondary or post-secondary institution in the fall of 2021.
  • NEET youth: Those between the ages of 18 and 34 years who were "Not Employed, in Education or in Training" during the fieldwork.
• When reporting subgroup variations, only differences that are significant at the 95% confidence level and that pertain to a subgroup sample size of more than n=30 are discussed. If one or more categories in a subgroup are not mentioned in a discussion of subgroup differences, it can be assumed that significant differences were found only among the categories reported.
• Comparisons to results from previous studies are included when possible. This includes the 2019 National Electors Study for the 43rd General Election, the 2015 Evaluation of the Electoral Reminder Program (ERP) for the 42nd Canadian Federal Election and the 2015 Survey of Electors Following the 42nd General Election.

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