Advance poll turnout soars in Manitoba

By: Inayat Singh Posted: 5:40 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015 Last Modified: 4:29 PM CDT Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015 | Updates

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Advance polls continue to grow in popularity for Canadian voters, with turnout at the early polls last weekend increasing again in this election compared to previous election.

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Advance polls continue to grow in popularity for Canadian voters, with turnout at the early polls last weekend increasing again in this election compared to previous election.

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This article was published 14/10/2015 (3624 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Advance polls continue to grow in popularity for Canadian voters, with turnout at the early polls last weekend increasing again in this election compared to previous election.

About 3.6 million Canadians voted in the advance polls this weekend, a 71 per cent increase from the 2.1 million advance voters in the 2011 election.

The result continues a trend of increasing turnout at advance polls. In 2011, turnout at advance polls increased by 34.5 per cent compared with the 2008 election.

Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun
People queue up to cast their ballots during advance voting in Brandon. (Colin Corneau / Brandon Sun files) — Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun People queue up to cast their ballots during advance voting in Brandon. (Colin Corneau / Brandon Sun files)

“Many Canadians chose to vote at advance polls in this election,” Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand said Wednesday in a release. “Having four polling days provided greater flexibility and convenience for voters.”

In Manitoba, 108,454 people voted at advance polls, according to preliminary estimates. That’s double the 55,871 people who voted at advance polls in 2011.

Turnout in every Manitoba riding increased over 2011, although it may not be fully accurate to compare turnouts with 2011 since many ridings’ boundaries have changed.

The northern Manitoba riding of Churchill-Keewatinook-Aski, which was the riding of Churchill in 2011, showed the most pronounced increase in turnout. Advance voting there nearly tripled from 1,800 votes in 2011 to 7,154 votes in 2015.

This is especially significant since in 2011, Churchill had the lowest voter turnout in Manitoba.

In Winnipeg, meanwhile, Winnipeg Centre – which also suffers from perennial low voter turnout – saw a jump from 1,879 advance votes in 2011 to 4,959 in 2015.

Votes cast in advance polls across Manitoba

The map shows the number of votes cast at advance polls in a riding. Click on a riding to see how many were cast in the 2011 election. Scroll out to see all of Manitoba

Will the overall trend continue downward?

Voter turnout has been trending downward for the past few elections in Canada.

Average turnout has been 71 per cent for the 41 general elections since 1867.

Turnout rarely went below 70 per cent from the 1950s to 2000, but it has been slipping in the six elections since 1997.

The lowest turnout in Canadian history was in 2008, at 58.8 per cent. The last federal election in 2011 had a turnout of only 61.1 per cent, the third lowest in Canadian history.

The highest turnout, meanwhile, was in 1958, at 79.4 per cent, when the Progressive Conservatives under John Diefenbaker won a majority government. Subsequent elections in 1962 and 1963 also saw similarly high turnouts, at about 79 per cent.

In 2011, Manitoba had a voter turnout of 55.7 per cent, lower than the national average. The people of Winnipeg South Centre, represented by Conservative MP Joyce Bateman, appeared to be the most engaged, with a turnout of 69 per cent. Meanwhile, the sprawling riding of Churchill, represented by NDP MP Niki Ashton, had the lowest turnout at only 43.8 per cent.

In Winnipeg, inner-city ridings saw lower turnouts. Winnipeg Centre saw a turnout of 48.2 per cent and Winnipeg North saw a turnout of 49.3, compared to a city-wide average of 60.3 per cent.