Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says 98% of the respondents from all divisions in the first ever Fijian Elections Office Pre-Election Survey have indicated they will vote in the 2022 general elections.
The survey was conducted between the 21st January 2022 to 11th February 2022.
There were 9,576 survey respondents where 5,438 were females and 4,138 were males.
Saneem says this survey was born from the FEO’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan where the FEO has heavily emphasized on initiatives to enhance voter participation in the 2022 general election.
He says while voter participation in an election is dependent on many factors, there is a lack of scientific statistical data on the knowledge, views and understanding of voters.
Saneem says there are several commentaries and claims that surface in discussions relating to participation in elections.
The Supervisor says one must keep in mind that since the introduction of voluntary voting in Fiji, the number of invalid votes has not risen above 1% in comparison to 6.4% in 2006 and 11.7% in 2001.
Saneem also highlighted that 18 percent of those who indicated they will vote in the next general election are not planning on reading the manifestos of political parties while 17% who said they will not vote have indicated that they will read party manifestos.
The Supervisor says 74% of the survey respondents said they take some level of interest in politics with 22% taking a lot of interest and 52% taking little interest.
He says 26% of the respondents indicated they took no interest at all.
Saneem says in the Post Election Voter Survey after the 2018 general election, 19.7% of the survey respondents noted a lot of interest, 58.3% noted a little interest while 21.9% noted no interest in politics
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