New Canadians and the Canadian Federal Elections

This project, in collaboration with Elections Canada (EC), focuses on new Canadians’ political attitudes, knowledge, and behaviours in the context of Canadian federal elections. The project aims to assess how new Canadians (immigrants who have obtained Canadian citizenship), perceive and engage with electoral and democratic processes, and how media consumption, pre-migration experiences, and electoral participation can shape these relationships for new Canadians compared to other Canadians. This includes questions on immigrants’ attitudes on electronic voting, Internet voting, electoral fraud, foreign electoral interference, misinformation and disinformation created by AI bots, and also question their trust in institutions, knowledge about elections, satisfaction with democracy, decision to vote or abstain, sense of civic duty, and other issues.

1. What is the impact of Canadian federal elections on new Canadians' democratic attitudes and knowledge of the electoral process, compared to the rest of the Canadian electorate?
2. How pre and post immigration experience shape their attitudes toward electronic voting, Internet voting, electoral fraud, foreign electoral interference?
3. How does media consumption, including traditional and social media, shape new Canadians’ knowledge and attitudes toward democracy?

Researchers will use Elections Canada’s electoral surveys data from the 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021, and 2025 federal elections. The research will focus on the 2019, 2021, and 2025 electoral studies, as these contain pre and post election panel data, larger samples, and all the key variables needed for analyses.

This project is in the planning stage.

Elections, electronic voting, trust in political institutions, premigration experiences