OTTAWA — OTTAWA - Elections Canada says more than 68 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the federal election – more than 19.5 million people.
While this election was widely expected to see increased turnout, it did not surpass the record set in March 1958, when 79.4 per cent of eligible Canadians voted.
But the nearly 68.7 per cent turnout was the best since the 1993 federal election, which saw 69.6 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot.
Elections Canada says early estimates indicate 11 million people voted at their polling station or in their long-term care facility on election day.
The agency says nearly 7.3 million Canadians voted at advance polls while 1.2 million voted by special ballot.
Elections Canada does not gather demographics data so it’s not clear which groups turned out to vote, but it says postelection surveys can show which groups faced barriers to voting and what can be done to address them in future elections.
The Liberal party ended the election with 43.7 per cent of the total vote and 169 seats, while the Conservative party secured 41.3 per cent of the vote and 144 seats.
The Bloc Quebecois and the NDP both took 6.3 per cent of the vote, and will hold 22 and seven seats, respectively.
I wish the turnout was higher, but I get it. Before voting I checked on how close the race in my riding was. It wasn’t. The Conservative candidate was projected to win a landslide victory with 99% confidence. I regret looking because it made me not even want to go out and vote. I did anyways thinking maybe there’ll be way more voters than normal this year. There wasn’t. The Conservative candidate won a landslide victory. Just like last election, and the one before that, and the one before that. I wasn’t even born yet the last time this riding wasn’t held by a Conservative. FPTP voting sucks.
Our riding was projected 99% Conservative win but we went NDP. The riding specific forecasts are misleading, and I wonder how many important votes stayed home because they looked at the forecast and thought it was pointless.
My city is a giant retirement community pretending to be a city, so naturally a Conservative always wins. Didn’t stop me from voting anyway, because fuck 'em. Hopefully things change when the retirees biff it.
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Older maritimers remember the reform party and the apparent disdain they had for us. Unfortunately when the pcs and reform merged, we got mostly reform out of the deal
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Mine was at 94% so I also felt like not voting. I did anyway and the Cons still won but it was actually a much closer result than what the polls had made it out to be. First time in a long time we haven’t been orange though so that really sucks.
This makes no sense… Unless you wanted conservatives to win, that number should have only made you want to go out and vote that much more.
And if you WANTED cons to win, it also should have made you want to go out and vote more because that landslide win won’t happen without people going out to make it happen.
Sad that in the most consequential election in most Canadian’s lifetimes that more than 3 in 10 decided to stay home.
FPTP means that many votes have negligible impact, so it’s understandable why some don’t bother.
Probably would not change much with proportional representation. A surprising number of people just don’t care.
The Bloc Quebecois and the NDP both took 6.3 per cent of the vote, and will hold 22 and seven seats, respectively.
Our electoral system is fundamentally misrepresentative by design. We desperately need proportional representation.
That discrepancy hit me as well. How are the seats determined?
Bloc Quebecois is only represented in Quebec while the NPD is represented across Canada.
So the Bloc had a lot of concentrated vote in Quebec, winning a lot of ridings while the NPD didn’t score well across Canada, not getting much riding.
First Past The Post create these discrepencies.
Ahhh, that makes sense. I’m American and hadn’t read/heard about that part of Canadian politics in awhile, so I appreciate the response!
Just so you know, America also has a first-past-the-post system. You just have the electoral college in addition to that, which we don’t have.
Canadians apparently don’t realize how much of a privilege it is to be able to vote. Surprises me every time.
It should be near a 100%. Make voting mandatory.
I’m always shocked when I talk to a woman who doesn’t vote in particular. Like your ancestors had to fight for that right very hard, why wouldn’t you exercise it?
These numbers are really encouraging. Voter participation has been a serious issue on all levels of government for a long time, and hopefully this is the beginning of a reverse in trends. Canadians need to at least pay a minimum of attention to what their leaders are doing or else they’ll just do whatever they think they can get away with.
So many Canadian leaders sneak in absurd laws and policies and Canadians just don’t notice or say anything, and I say this in regards to all parties. Not saying anything, especially during elections, is a tacit approval. Because showing disapproval is the only way to make governments know that they can’t get away with ignoring the public good in favour of personal agendas.
Fuck dude Canadians dont even know what provincial governments do. They get mad at: the carbon tax, healthcare, infrastructure, education, and housing yet at every turn that’s on the province to fund and manage. The federal government chips in to help of course but the province MANAGES it at the end of the day. And before anybody says “the carbon tax was Trudeau Though!”, I’m sorry, but the carbon tax was only a federal MINIMUM if your province didn’t have a system in place already. Or when they got rid of any other pricing system like Ontario did, Alberta did and Saskatchewan did and then got all pissy when they had to pay it and not a single fucking moron in those provinces hated on the premiers for it.
Canadians can be just as fucking dumb as Americans and it was really showing these last 5 years
So about 69% of the voters elected 169 liberals? Nice.
Would have been 2 more if Elections Canada did not fumble sending us the out of country voting package. Sure there are many others in the same boat.
There were huge issues in Nunavik as well, leading to many indigenous communities essentially losing the right to vote https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/makivvik-corp-calls-for-investigation-after-voting-irregularities-in-nunavik/
That happened to me last election 🙄
Terrible turnout. The worst part is knowing that the % of RW voters was probably 90+ % as usual, with the rest of us lagging way behind.
carney won by a little over 3.5% PP was still extremely close despite all the tariff and trump dic sucking by pp.
Historically, the power switch between Conservatives and Liberals roughly each decade.
A few months ago, conservatives were a shoe in for a majority government. So what happened here is nothing short of spectacular.
American style politics were staved off for at least a cycle and considering the state of the world, I welcome that.
The massive pro-PP propaganda network including META, Google, twitter, etc. boosted pro-PP messaging and ant-Carney propaganda/disinformation and it still wasn’t enough to save the CPC.
bad timing as trumps tariffs really fucked up thier messaging, from my limited news of canada, at least DOUG recognized early on enough to adapt and capitalize on this.
Doug Ford is a scammer.
It’s amazing how a little taste of fascism motivates people isn’t it?
…and the Green Party took a single seat.
Well, you can thank Trudeau for that, reneging on his promise that we’d have electoral reform
I was watching This hour has 22 minutes and the host asked if a good outcome for the Greens would be more seats than leaders
The Green party is in shambles, they don’t even know who they are anymore. What the hell are “co-leaders”? It’s basically just a name for Elizabeth May’s independent status.
What the hell are “co-leaders”?
Did the searching for you. No offense intented, but a lot of people don’t know either. Other green parties of the world have more than one leader (ex. UK).
Should there be a fine of $25 for not voting?
Not a bad idea
Just give $25.
Edit: you know that would incentivize them to obstruct voting more right?
I… don’t see how a slap on the wrist for people who don’t vote would “obstruct” voting.
It could also be $25 off your tax burden, but it’s less immediate and probably less effective.
Btw it’s a thing in many other countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
The Wikipedia page also has excellent arguments for and against the practice.
World of Warcraft sleep bonus rules, people are far more incentivized to do a thing if they recieve a reward for doing it rather than a punishment for not doing it.
Possibly, but no country has ever done it this way, possibly because it would make elections really expensive and discourage a change of government.
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Hey, I remember you! You’re the guy who seemingly spends all their free time telling all of Lemmy about how proud they are of not doing their civic duty.
Democracy only works if people vote, you’re actively undermining democracy.
Just vote. It’s free. Save $25.
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Cancell your vote, but cast it.
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Yeah, that’s what null voting shows. Not voting is apathy.
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