Site MenuBackground and Objectives – Report on the Survey of Campus Electors for the 43rd General Election
During the 2019 general election, to help increase access to voting for youth, Elections Canada launched the Vote on Campus program. This program, which had been piloted in 2015, resulted in the establishment of 119 Vote on Campus offices on 109 post-secondary campuses in 86 electoral districts across the country. These voting places were open for five consecutive days, from October 5 to 9, 2019. Anyone was able to cast their vote at one of these voting places, whether they were a student or not.
To support the development and evaluation of the Vote on Campus program, two surveys were designed: the Survey of Campus Electors and the Survey of Campus Administrators. Additionally, a broader survey, the Survey of Special Ballot Voters, served to capture the experiences of different types of special ballot voters, including campus voters. This report pertains to the Survey of Campus Electors. This is the first time that an online survey of campus electors, both voters and non-voters, has been conducted by reaching students through direct contact with post-secondary institutions footnote 1 .
Campus electors are individuals who had the opportunity to vote at a post-secondary institution as part of the Vote on Campus program in the 2019 general election. For the purpose of this survey, the target audience was students of those post-secondary institutions. While staff and other electors were permitted to take this survey, the majority of respondents were students.
The Survey of Campus Electors was designed for the purpose of collecting campus electors' opinions, attitudes and experiences in relation to the Vote on Campus program during the 2019 federal general election. Its results will be used to inform future Elections Canada programs and services as they relate to campus electors, and for evaluation purposes.
The survey included questions around the following themes:
- Awareness of the opportunity to vote on campus and sources of information
- Voting method used
- Reasons for not voting at the campus office
- Awareness of the opportunity to vote on campus and sources of information
- Socio-demographic information and level of political interest
Footnotes
Back to the note 1 In 2015, an exit survey of campus voters was conducted. A separate online survey was distributed to students through student associations, but it yielded a low sample size. The 2015 report for voting at select campuses, Friendship Centres and community centres for the 42nd general election is available here.