Election analysis

This activity challenges the students to analyse the biggest single event in the federal political process: a national election.

The teacher chooses to study either the 1997 or 2000 federal election. The class is divided into five home groups, and each group is assigned one of the five parties that won seats in the election.

Each home group is to analyse the party they have been assigned by addressing the following:

• What are the facts of the election? i.e., who was the party leader, how many seats did the party win, and in what areas of the country did the party receive its most support?

• What were the key elements of the party’s platform, or the program it presented to the voters?

• In analysing the campaign, what worked or did not work well for the party? Were there particular ‘defining’ moments that, in hindsight, benefited the party or worked against it?

When the home groups finish their work, new groups are to be formed so that within each new group, there is at least one expert on each of the five political parties.

Within the new groups, each ‘expert’ is to debrief the others on the findings for their particular party. When all experts have had their turn, and all five parties have been reviewed, the group should answer the following:

• Among the five parties that won seats in the election, what similarities and differences did you see?

• Did you detect any differences in the roles played by the leaders?

• If you were the leader of any of the five parties at the time, would you have run a different campaign?

• Resources

For an overview of the election campaigns, students should be encouraged to search major Canadian media web sites.

For a review of the official voting results, students can consult the Elections Canada web site.