Site MenuPublic Opinion Survey Following the October 24, 2016, By-election in the Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner Riding
Introduction
Elections Canada commissioned Phoenix Strategic Perspectives to conduct research to help evaluate the October 24, 2016, by-election held in Alberta in the federal constituency of Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner.
Background and Objectives
Elections Canada 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 enforce electoral legislation.
As part of its evaluation program, the agency wanted to conduct a survey of eligible electors in the electoral district of Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner (Alberta), where a by-election was held on October 24, 2016. The purpose of the survey was to evaluate electors' opinions, experience, attitudes and knowledge with respect to the agency's services and various aspects of the electoral process.
More specifically, surveyed electors were consulted on the following issues:
- Awareness of the election and of the different methods of voting
- Sources of information about the election
- Experiences with registration, including the voter information card
- Experiences with communications from Elections Canada
- Experiences with voting in the by-election
- Attitudes towards Elections Canada and election results
The results will be used to assist in evaluating and refining Elections Canada's programs and services to the electorate, which may help in developing the Chief Electoral Officer's reports to Parliament.
Methodology
A 10-minute, dual-frame (landline and cellphone), random-digit-dial telephone survey was conducted among 750 eligible electors from October 29 to November 13, 2016. Eligible electors were Canadian citizens at least 18 years old on polling day (October 24, 2016) who were residents of the Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner electoral district (i.e. had an address of ordinary residence in that electoral district) from the first day of the revision period until election day. Based on a sample of this size, the results can be considered accurate to within ±3.6%, 19 times out of 20 (finite population correction factor applied). The margin of error is greater for results pertaining to subgroups of the total sample. The sample was weighted to reflect the distribution of the population in the electoral district.
For a more complete description of the methodology, please refer to the methodology note available under separate cover.
Note to Readers
- For editorial purposes, the terms "electors," "eligible voters," and "respondents" are used interchangeably to denote survey participants. The term "voters" denotes survey participants who reported having voted.
- All results in the report are expressed as percentages, unless otherwise noted.
- Throughout the report, percentages may not always add up to 100% due to rounding or multiple mentions.
- The number of respondents changes throughout the report because questions were often asked to subsamples of the survey population. Accordingly, readers should be aware of this and exercise caution when interpreting results based on smaller numbers of respondents.
- At times, the number of respondents who answered certain questions or answered in a certain way is provided; this is denoted by "n=__." For example, for n=100, the number of respondents is 100.
- Demographic and other subgroup differences are identified in the report. When reporting subgroup variations, only differences that are significant at the 95% confidence level, indicative of a pattern and/or related to a subgroup sample size of more than n=30 are discussed in the report.