The Canadian Municipal Election Study

The purpose of the Canadian Municipal Election Study (CMES) was to fundamentally transform the state of municipal election research in Canada, undertaking a study of eight Canadian cities. Data included surveys of electors and candidates for municipal office in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Mississauga, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. At the time (data were collected in 2017 and 2018), the CMES was the largest survey of local electors ever conducted, anywhere in the world. Project data were used to write three books, and over two dozen peer-reviewed articles.

The CMES elector survey dataset is publicly available here (STATA format). Both the data and codebook are also available at the Harvard Dataverse.

We ask that researchers using the data please use the following citation:

McGregor, R.M., Anderson, C.D., Bélanger, É., Breux, S., Lucas, J., Matthews, J.S., Mévellec, A., Moore, A.A., Pruysers, S., Stephenson, L.B., & Tolley, E. (2021). “The Canadian Municipal Election Study.” Frontiers in Political Science: Elections and Representation. doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.745331

The project was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.