The defining characteristic of democracy is the right of citizens to choose their representatives.  As such, a vast amount of political research examines what leads voters to a particular choice. The primary interest of the Election Research Group (ERG), alternatively, is not to examine what voters choose, but instead how they reach their decisions and the institutional and contextual factors that may affect this process.

The Election Research Group is an initiative of Dr. Jason Roy and Dr. Shane Singh that develops web-based surveys and on-line voting experiments to examine voting behaviour. ERG has a particular interest in understanding how individuals interact with the vote decision environment, including institutional factors, when casting their vote, and how this interaction changes with political information and electoral complexity.  Ultimately, this research will serve as a practical and academic guide on methods of increasing informed voting; whether this can be best achieved by boosting civic knowledge, by decreasing electoral complexity, or through a combination of both. 

If you are interested in participating in this research, please click here for a list of our current projects.