Mid-Term Writting Test

Introduction

As a canadian citizen, it is an absolute must to vote when there are elections. It's in that spirit that me and my team started this survey on Canadian elections. We first understood that the age groups had different needs so we targeted two groups: 18 to 30 years old and 30 and above. Our hypothesis for the final results was that the NDP would win.


Method

We wanted to concentrate our questions in a main topic: the environment. We covered different point of views to test our hypothesis. Obviously, we also asked tricky questions about the economy. Here are our questions.
1 - Do you vote?
2 - How old are you?
3 - Do you approve that the industries get taxed on their carbon dioxide emissions?
4 - Do you think that prioritizing ecology in our politics is realistic, or is it simply an utopian vision?
5 - Do your think the green shift for the liberals is a good idea?
6 - Do you think its a good idea to invest $1 billion dollars in Advanced Manufacturing Prosperity (AMP) fund to promote a greener, more competitive manufacturing sector?
7 - Is it important for you to defend the unique rights and culture of the Quebec?
8 - Do you think that there should be particular environment laws in Quebec?
9 - Do you approve that 400 million dollars will be invested, as a priority, into the police to improve our security?
10 - Do you approve a compression of the budget invested into culture to prioritize a "responsible" investment into the public funds?
11 - Do you think it's a good idea to invest in companies that are innovating in the new energy economy, and creating new green collar jobs for Canadians?
12 - Are you satisfied when Jack Layton says he will shorten health care waiting lists by training more doctors and nurses?

We didn't tell the people asked which question refered to which party. Question 3 and 4 were for the green party, 5 and 6 for the liberal party, 7 and 8 for the Bloc Québécois, 9 and 10 for the conservative party and 11 and 12 for the NDP.
20 people completed the survey, 10 under 30 and 10 above 30. We didn't ask people under 18 since they don't vote. We also didn't ask the people who don't vote.


Results

The results were quite unexpected. Since we asked people directly, we were able to get some reason for their choices. People really care about the environment. 73,3% of the total votes on the environmental questions were positive about it and revealed that people care and are active about it.
70% of the time, people were in favor for the ideas of the green party. Same results showed up about the liberal party. For the concervative, only a poor 17,5% acknowledged their ideas. For the bloc, it was 72,5% aproved. NDP was the winner with 78% of aproval for their ideas.
Our hypothesis were usually wrong. We thought that people saw a green country as realistic, but it wasn't. We were also wrong with the question about the 1 billion dollar investment when we thought that everybody would refuse it. We also thought that 100% positive was to be expected when asked about the unique rights and culture of Quebec. For the concervative party, we thought that the people over 30 would be more positive but actually everybody rejected it. Fortunatley, we hypothesis were right for the NDP.


Discussion

The results of our survey compared to the real results were more acurate than our hypothesis. Though the people we asked might have different ideas than the rest of Canada. Here are a few factors that might have influenced in the error factor.
- same city
- same cegep
- same family
- only a few people (20)
- not generalizable enough questions
The range of our survey was too short to predict a real winner for the canadian elections since it's a whole country we're talking about. Maybe a large corporative company should do it next time.

446 words
(752 + the 12 questions before editing)