Description:
Topics covered in the questionnaire are: distance to the voting station, queuing time for voters, accessible to persons with disabilities and the elderly, signage and instructions at voting stations, voting procedures inside the voting station, trust in the electoral commission, evaluations of electoral officials, voting procedure for voters with special needs, effectiveness of the electoral commission's voter education campaign, usefulness of information sources, disturbances at voting stations, electoral freeness and fairness.
The data set for dissemination contains 76 variables and 194 cases.
In terms of the number of voting stations, a 100% realisation rate was achieved. All 300 selected voting stations were therefore visited on Election Day.
Abstract:
The objective of the 2011 Election Satisfaction Survey (ESS) was to determine opinions and perceptions of voters on Election Day. The main intention of the survey was to determine if elections were free and fair. A further aim of the study was to assess the operational efficiency of the Electoral Commission in managing the 2011 municipal elections.
Three hundred voting stations throughout South Africa were selected using complex sample design. Realising that there were very few election Observers visiting many of the sampled voting stations, the fieldworkers were advised to interview as many election Observers as they could find. The study method comprised a brief (5-minute) face-to-face interview with the election Observers. The Electoral Commission was keen to release the survey results together with the official election results (which took place 3 days after the election).
The HSRC together with the IEC developed the observer questionnaire. Questions included
Profile of the election Observers
Type of voting station structure
Facilities at the voting station
Voting station signage
Perceived ease of locating voting stations
Voting station security
Considerations of the voting stations and procedures for people with special needs
Disturbances in and outside the voting station
Display of party posters inside voting stations
Political party activities and agents inside the voting station
Perception of whether poll was free and fair
IEC performance
Media presence
Face-to-face interview
The study was conducted among election Observers in the 2011 Municipal Elections.
A complex sample design was used in drawing the sample of voting stations. The design included stratification and a multi-stage sampling procedure. The database of voting stations obtained from the IEC was merged with that of Population Census Enumeration Areas (EAs). The sampling of the voting station was done proportionally to the dominant race type, geo-type and the number of voting stations in a given province. This was to ensure that a Municipally representative sample of voting stations was selected and the results of the survey could be properly weighted to the population of legible voters in the country. At the actual voting stations, fieldworkers used random sampling to select voters to ensure a fair representation in terms of gender, race, age, and disability status.
In the cases of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the numbers of voting stations were sampled below proportion given that almost half of the South African registered voters are based in these provinces. Conversely, the number of voting stations in the Northern Cape was over-sampled in order to generate sufficient interviews in that province to facilitate meaningful analysis. Table 1 provides the distribution of voting stations per province and the number of voters interviewed.
Realising that there were very few election Observers visiting many of the sampled voting stations, the fieldworkers were advised to interview as many election Observers as they could find
