Electoral Management Survey

The Electoral Management Survey is a survey of electoral authorities worldwide about how elections are run in their country. It gathers data which is not easily accessible via other methods e.g. in laws or on websites. We ask one member of a national electoral management body in each country to complete the survey on behalf of their organisation.

We have run surveys in 2017-8 in collaboration with A-WEB and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe which focussed on EMB structure, resources, capacity and personnel.

We ran second survey in 2021 in collaboration with International IDEA on how elections were run during the pandemic.

The 2024 survey

We are aware that electoral authorities are often inundated with surveys from academics and other organizations. We are therefore collaborating with partners including International IDEA, IFES, Carter Center, and other organisations to move towards a situation in which there is one single combined survey. The aim is that all the survey:

  • Combines the requests for information from as many partners as possible to reduce the burden on electoral officials.

  • Is regular and periodic so that it can be expected

  • Focus on added value to existing datasets

  • Focus on information not available elsewhere e.g. because it has a technical nature or because the perceptions of the EMB are requested.

  • Be short and easy to complete

  • Ask questions EMBs can answer and not require responses from multiple departments, if possible

A third survey is being rolled out. It is available to download here. We also have the survey available in several other languages on request.

Please get in touch with electoralintegrity@gmail.com if you have any questions or with completed surveys.

We are grateful to EMBs in the following countries who have already completed the survey as of 21 June 2024:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Cabo Verde, CAMEROON, Canada, Commonwealth of Dominica, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, France, Georgia, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, New Zealand, Norway, Papua, New Guinea, Peru, Portugal, Republic of Liberia, Romania, Samoa São Tomé e Príncipe, Sénégal, Sierra Leone, Slovak Republic, Suriname, Sweden, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, Zambia.