What Mattered this Election?

STUDENT AFFAIRS / UCSA ELECTION 2024

Student polling from the final weeks of the race.

Polling conducted by The Canterbury Memo in the lead up to the election reveals growing dissatisfaction among the student population towards the UCSA Executive Team and a strong desire for change.

Diversity, the environment, and wider advocacy were among the most crucial ‘big picture’ issues at the University when respondents were asked to identify the three most important issues to them. Many spoke of Gaza as being a key wider advocacy issue and played a large role in their dissatisfaction towards the Executive.

“Those elected to represent us should take our issues seriously. We are having to bring these issues to the university ourselves, they should be the ones raising our concerns at that higher administrative level” one respondent said. 

“It took weeks of organised protest to achieve anything in the realm of Israeli divestment for example, these types of issues simply aren’t being raised at the executive level. Our voices are not being represented.”

The recent increased mobilisation of student advocacy highlights the level to which the Executive have faltered on their responsibility to represent the interests of the student body (read: interview with UCSA Presidential Candidate Beaxtrix Gilling).

Two-thirds of those surveyed responded negatively to the direction the Executive team was taking regarding the issues that mattered most to them. 

Diversity being an important issue (identified by approximately half of respondents) helps make sense of the low perceived representation felt by students towards the Executive, with an overwhelming number of respondents feeling unrepresented by the UCSA. Less than 10% claimed that they felt represented by those elected to the UCSA Executive team.

Structural changes to equity representation are a campaign promise of incumbent President Luc MacKay who secured re-election. MacKay's 2025 ambitions include the addition of representatives from “underrepresented cohorts”, mentioning LGBTQ+ and disabled groups as well as online students. According to UCSA figures published in CANTA, voter turnout in UCSA elections is some of the highest in the continent for student associations; despite this, turnout for this election was barely a quarter of the student population, at 26.11%. Our polling expected a far higher turnout, with the vast majority of respondents indicating a strong intention to vote in this election. 

Notwithstanding the poll’s significant sample, there was clear bias in the subset of students surveyed. 

While there was a clear desire for change, participation was low, with very few students putting their names forward for the election, putting into question the accessibility of the system and general student awareness of the role of the UCSA and the way in which these elections work.

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This opinion polling was carried out over two weeks between 22/7/24 and 1/8/24 with a statistically significant sample size of 107.