Description: This data set contains responses of South African legible voters in the 2014 National elections citizens aged 18 years and older.

On election day 300 selected voting stations were visited. The number of voters interviewed was 14 177 from the expected 15 000 which represented 95% response rate and the data set contains 60 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 2014 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 2014 national and provincial elections.

Three hundred voting stations throughout South Africa were selected using complex sample design. Around 50 randomly selected voters were interviewed at each of the 300 voting stations. The prime target population was therefore individuals aged 18+ who reside in South Africa and who were registered to vote in the 2014 National Elections-and voted. As voters exited these voting stations they were interviewed. The study method comprised a brief (5-minute) face-to-face interview. Since 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 deemed electronic data collection as most appropriate for this project.

Face-to-face interview

The study was conducted among South Africans who voted in the 2014 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 2014 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 nationally 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.

At each voting station, the interviewer was instructed to interview 50 voters during the course of the day. Interviews were divided into four time slots: 07:00 - 10:30; 10:31 – 14:00; 14:01 – 17:30 and the remainder between 17:31 and closing time (21:00). This was done to ensure a spread of interviews throughout Election Day, since it was imagined that different dynamics might be at play depending on the time of day.

Province

Voting Stations Sampled

Expected sample

Western Cape

32

1600

Eastern Cape

40

2000

Northern Cape

14

700

Free State

21

1050

KwaZulu-Natal

53

2650

North West

28

1400

Gauteng

55

2750

Mpumalanga

27

1350

Limpopo

30

1500

Total

300

15000