Description: This data set contains responses of South African legible voters in the 2004 national and provincial assembly elections aged 18 years and older.

All 200 selected voting stations were visited on election day. The number of voters interviewed was 14 227 and the data set contains 26 variables.

The questionnaire questions included the distance traveled to the voting station, means of transport utilised, time spent in the voting queue, perception of IEC officials' competence, and perception of the freeness and fairness of the election. Abstract: The objective of the 2004 Election Satisfaction Survey (ESS) -Voters was to determine opinions and perceptions of voters on election eay. 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 2004 national and provincial assembly elections.

The study method comprised brief (5-minute) interviews with 50 to 70 randomly selected voters exiting from 200 randomly selected voting stations. Voters were asked eleven questions concerning their experiences on election day.

The prime target population was therefore individuals aged 18+ who reside in South Africa and who were registered to vote in the 2004 National Elections and voted. As voters exited these voting stations they were interviewed.

The HSRC together with the IEC developed the voter questionnaire. Questions included the distance travelled to the voting station, means of transport utilised, time spent in the voting queue, perception of IEC officials' competence, and perception of the freeness and fairness of the election.

Face-to-face interview

The study was conducted among South Africans who voted in the 2004 National Elections. The target population for the voter component of the study was individuals aged 18 years and older who were registered to vote in the 2004 Elections.

The IEC had designated 17389 voting stations across the country. The sample of 200 was thus selected randomly within each province, thus allocating a potential total of 14000 questionnaires. In order to select a random sample of 200 voting stations at which voters would be interviewed, two factors were taken into account. These were the national distribution of registered voters and the absolute number of registrations in each of the nine provinces.

The selected sample was directly proportional to the provincial distribution of registered voters, with three exceptions. The first exception was in the case of the Northern Cape, where a proportional sample of only four voting stations would have been inadequate to make any provincial generalisations. The sample was thus increased to a disproportionately large ten voting stations. This would generate a potential 700 interviews. The data gathered was down-weighted for the purposes of the analysis in the report. The second and third exceptions were Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, where 22,5% and 18,5% of registered voters were located. For these two provinces, the proportional 45 and 37 out of the 200 sampled voting stations were each reduced by three, to 42 and 34 respectively. This accounted for the six added to the Northern Cape and kept the total voting station sample to 200. Data from Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal were up-weighted in the analysis.

At each voting station, a fieldworker was required to interview between 50 and 70 voters during the course of the day. The interviews were to be divided into three periods, namely 25 between 07:00 and 12:00, 25 between 12:00 and 17:00 and the remaining 20 between 17:00 and closing time, scheduled to be 21:00. This was to ensure a spread over different times of the day when different dynamics might have been in operation.

On the day, the targeted number of 14000 voter interviews was slightly exceeded in each province, the total realised sample being 14227 interviews.

Number of surveyed voting stations and respondents by province:

Province

Voting Stations Sampled

Expected sample

Eastern Cape

28

2022

Free State

13

928

Gauteng

42

3014

KwaZulu-Natal

34

2389

Mpumalanga

14

987

Northern Cape

10

731

Limpopo

21

1484

North West

17

1195

Western Cape

21

1477

Total

200

14227