seven years of voter turnout
Turnout over 7 years of DSU Elections
This graph shows cumulative votes over time for seven elections. Not shown is the 2007 student spaces referendum, which was so good it won’t even fit on this graph. Also not shown is the 2004 turnout, which similarly makes every other year look bad. The axes are unlabelled (SACRILEGE!) but I believe in context it is fairly obvious what is shown here. The smoothing is artificial; the number of votes was sampled every hour. 2009 starts so high because there was advanced polling that year.
The past three years ended up clustered closely together, just under the 2500 mark. This year blew by all three years, falling just shy of the 3,000 mark. Some things to note:
- 2007, the best turnout shown, I suspect benefited from the publicity of the 2007 student spaces referendum
- 2006 is notable for being the closest set of races since the ’02 elections, with every executive position going to multiple ballot rounds to find a winner.
- 2011, I do not know what the cause is. The races weren’t particularly close, there was a mildly contentious referendum question but that was a fairly localized show… perhaps the CRO was especially vigorous? Or the candidates especially outgoing? Any thoughts here?
- I know 2011 is the best of the past four years, the fourth best over the last 10 years, and am quite convinced it holds fourth at least as far back as 1980 (Dalhousie went from 2,000 to 9,000 students in the 1960-1980 period, and the larger the student body the harder it is to reach. With paper ballots and 14k students, voter turnout was hovering in the 3%-8% range.)
- You can see the spikes when an email went out to students. Although there was mention of the election in the Dal Sticky Notes on the first day, there is no sharp spike (that might have led to generally higher turnout over the corresponding periods in previous years). The real spike came when the DSU dispatch went out early on the 3rd day (it was actually sent in the afternoon of the 2nd day but wasn’t approved until the morning of the 3rd). This resulted in the most votes received on the third day since we started keeping track of when people vote.
There are many more observations to be made; add your own!
Way to go Marysia (CRO)! Kudos for the “Don’t Vote” video and getting Faculty on board with promoting the elections. I think we can see even more success by getting the university and faculties to understand that it can be just as much their job to promote and encourage the elections on campus. Many of the issues of visibility and the restrictions on campaigning do not come from the DSU but from Facilities Management or the University. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era! When the University will help foster a more vibrant student life!
Also, I think the high number of candidates running for Executive positions helps the Elections’ profile as well — more circles of friends to rope in!
Can someone explain to me how over half the turnout voted for a guy who didn’t know how to spell President and Experienced…and then tried to cover it up like it was some campaign motto, but didn’t explain why experienced was spelled wrong…and then in another video changed the spelling of both words thus proving it was actually a mistake?
Ridiculous.
I get the sense you might just be mocking him, and I support that… but I actually found the question interesting. Obviously I can’t speak for 1500+ people, but four thoughts / possible explanations come to mind:
a) I think candidates are judged by their spelling on campaign posters only when no other information is available. If other information IS available – like a website, or a platform, or a year-long record as president that can be examined – then people can forgive spelling mistakes if the other information is compelling. So we mocked him for it all week, I’m sure he’ll hear it all year, and like Yuriy for VP Eductaion and Jennier for VPI the story of his mistake will be repeated for years to come. But when it came down to casting a vote, voters decided that they’d judge him by something other than a spelling mistake someone on his campaign made. When you have better information, spelling isn’t a reasonable complete barometer by which to judge someone.
b) I don’t think anyone interpreted the explanation of the mis-spelling of president as being a serious “cover up”. It was fairly obviously a joke. Most people who saw that much of his website were probably judging him on other factors.
c) If an incumbent can keep the support of people who are involved with the DSU and have seen their performance, the student body at large tends to support the incumbent by a 2:1 ratio or better.
d) Posters are not a common factor in helping voters make up their minds – I would imagine many voters never even saw the poster let alone noticed the mistake.
In short, though it was probably a factor for some people, enough people made their decision based on other factors.
OK. Some people have started calling him Chres Saulnier…. (pr. Krez.) like prez…