Site MenuYouth Engagement and Mobilization in the 2010 Toronto Municipal Election
4. Youth Mobilization Assessment
This section includes a brief quantitative analysis of the overall contact rates for on-the-ground youth mobilization activity. The characteristics of organizations that were successful at mobilizing youth are also discussed later in this report (see Interview Findings).
4.1 Summary of Mobilization Activity
The partner organizations that participated in this research provided us with information about their mobilization activity leading up to the election. This information was collected in a standardized format, including the location and estimated reach of different activities (see interview design and methodology for details). The large majority of recorded activity took place in late September or October.
This analysis considers only on-the-ground mobilization activities such as election events or canvassing. Although some information was collected about print and on-line activity, it is excluded from this analysis because there was no consistent way to assess their reach. Interview participants provided us with contact estimates for on-the-ground activities, based on either event attendance or the number of people approached.
Figure 1: Estimated number of eligible voters reached by contact type
Text description of Figure 1 is available on a separate page.
Altogether, these on-the-ground activities reached an estimated 6,140 voting-age Torontonians.22 Figure 1 shows this mobilization separated into three categories: election debates, workshops or other events, and unsolicited contact. The first two categories are self-explanatory. Unsolicited contact is defined as any public activity that does not have a self-selected audience, such as canvassing a neighbourhood or speaking to a classroom of college students.
The distribution of this contact is somewhat surprising, as the number of people contacted does not correspond to the amount of effort put into each type of activity. Of the 17 different organizations active in these areas, 12 held workshops or events, nine were involved in organizing debates, and four engaged in unsolicited personal campaigning.
By their nature, workshops tend to be smaller, more personal and more resource-intensive than debates. Their attendance is therefore likely to be relatively low. However, attendance for debates varied significantly, ranging from 30 to 350 in most cases.23 The mean attendance for debates was 184 but the median was 90. The three largest debates account for more than half of all attendees, with most debates drawing relatively few people. Far fewer organizations were involved in unsolicited personal campaigning, yet they reached a comparable number of people.
There are many reasons to host an election debate, such as encouraging dialogue and ensuring that certain issues or community interests are part of the agenda during an election. However, these findings show that most debates draw small crowds. Given that organizing a debate requires a relatively large amount of time and resources, and that those who attend are already likely to be engaged, debates should be approached with caution when used as a mobilization tool.
22 Some organizations also provided us with information about their outreach to school-aged youth, which we excluded for the purposes of this analysis.
23 The sole outlier was the ArtsVote debate hosted at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which drew a total of approximately 1,250 people (though not exclusively youth).