There is no democracy without free and fair elections.
Elections provide a crucial opportunity to assess the actual workings of a democracy.
The four researchers are responsible for the design and conduct of the 2000 Canadian Election Study, for which they received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The primary mandate of the study is to provide a thorough account of the election, to underline the main reasons why people vote the way they do, to indicate what does and does not change during the campaign and from one election to another, and to highlight similarities and differences between voting and elections in Canada and in other democratic countries. The second mandate is to contribute to the development of scientific knowledge regarding the motivations of voters and the meanings of elections and election campaigns in democratic societies. The third mandate is to assemble a rich set of data about Canadians' attitudes and opinions on a wide variety of social, economic, and political issues, and to make that data publicly available to researchers in political science, sociology, economics, communications, and journalism. The four researchers were also responsible for the design and conduct of the 1997 Canadian Election Study.