About

The Electoral Reform Act 2022 provides An Coimisiún Toghcháin (An Coimisiún) with a significant mandate to prepare research programmes and conduct research on electoral policy and procedure including on matters relating to the discharge of its functions. In July 2024, An Coimisiún Toghcháin published its first Research Programme 2024-2026 after a public consultation process. This Programme included a commitment to develop a National Election and Democracy Study (NEDS) for Ireland.

Despite having a well-regarded body of research on elections and electoral behaviour, Ireland lags behind other countries in relation to the availability of reliable and comprehensive data about its elections. Such studies have been in place in many other countries for well over 50 years. With the NEDS, An Coimisiún aims to rectify this deficit and build a democratic databank to measure over time the views, attitudes and experiences of the Irish public of electoral events and democracy and the factors that influence these. Within this, there will be a particular focus on factors to better understand turnout and political participation, as these are key areas for An Coimisiún.

This data also informs the separate Post Electoral Event Reviews (PEERs) which An Coimisiún may prepare and publish after each electoral event with particular requirements to look at the accessibility of the voting process for individuals with disabilities, illnesses or literacy challenges.

In addition, the NEDS also includes questions which are a key focus for political scientists and academics in Election Studies and other research around whether and how people used their vote and motivations and influences around voting choices. Questions in this part of the study are selected by the academic members of the NEDS Management Board. Collecting data in these areas allows Ireland to be part of comparative research and international studies on political and electoral systems and democracy.

The data gathered through the NEDS is anonymised and open source so as to provide stakeholders, researchers, the public, the media and the political system with high quality information about the state of Ireland’s democracy.