What makes the atmosphere of an election?

At EPO, we always like to innovate and try to understand things that are meaningful to people but not yet well understood by research. One of the things we realised in speaking to many citizens around democracies is that they talk a lot about the “atmosphere” of elections, but this is not something that research studies or understands well so far, and so we decided that we should try to.

In our surveys, we ask people across countries to tell us to talk about the atmosphere of elections that are taking place in their countries. In parallel, from the US to South Korea and from Australia to Peru, Chile, the UK, Germany and France, our teams visit countries before, during and after the elections to try and collect a lot of exciting information about possible markers of democratic atmosphere in public places and public spheres: we look for posters or electoral propaganda on the streets, we visit polling stations, we ask people to tell us a few words about the atmosphere of democracy in their country and the topics and issues that are most meaningful to them. We also collect information about the tone of campaigns and social media discussion, the evolution of polls, events that can affect the electoral, pre-electoral and post-electoral periods and much more. This work is exciting and exploratory because the atmosphere of democracy can mean so many things to many different people but we want to capture it just right!

So are you willing to take just one minute to help us? If so, you can do it very easily by answering just one question below: please tell us about something (it could be an event, an image, a fact, or anything else) that encapsulates (or symbolises) the atmosphere of a recent election in your country. Please tell us which election you are talking about and if you want, you can even attach an image an photo. We’ll collate all of your answers and they will contribute to our ground-breaking research on understanding (and perhaps ultimately improving!) the atmosphere of democracy and elections around the world!

Thank you!