Voter turnout plummeted in the two North Vancouver municipalities in the 2022 local government elections, while West Vancouver’s declined slightly.
According to unofficial results published on election night, just 22.64 per cent of City of North Vancouver residents and 22.63 per cent of
District of North Vancouver residents cast ballots in the election. That’s down sharply from 33.8 per cent and 36.6 per cent, respectively, in 2018.
In West Vancouver, meanwhile, 35.2 per cent of eligible residents voted, down from 38.3 per cent in the last election.
The average voter turnout across B.C. this time around was about 37 per cent.
Reading the tea leaves of voter turnout is a difficult practice, said UBC political science professor and Lynn Valley resident Gerald Baier, but there are a number of factors at play.
The fact the two incumbent mayors won re-election in North Vancouver suggests a level of complacency among the voter base, he said.
“There’s maybe less of a sense of that need for change,” he said.
Baier said the campaigns on the North Shore lacked major hot-button issues that had everyone talking, and candidates across the political spectrum tended to speak on the same themes, he noted.
“Here, there wasn’t a big, big policy issue like the Surrey Police or something,” he said. “My son’s Grade 5 class had almost everybody come through and he said they all said kind of the same thing.”
The absence of political parties at the local level on the North Shore could also be a factor, Baier said. Municipal parties are better at raising awareness about their campaigns than independent candidates, especially if they have volunteers and party infrastructure that overlaps with provincial and federal parties. And parties do help distinguish candidates’ policies from one another, he said.
Still, there were enough lawn signs out and voting was easy enough that no one can claim to have not known about the election or had difficulty with casting their ballot, Baier said.
“All those things maybe make a perfect storm that leads to more dampened enthusiasm for the act of voting,” he said.
And Baier added, even with lower turnouts, the newly elected councils remain legitimate.
“Everyone had an opportunity. I think not voting is also an exercise of franchise. Just in a less satisfying way,” he said.
Baier said there is some room for optimism that voter turnout will rebound, based on the student vote programs run in the local schools.
“The levels of enthusiasm for school kids during the student vote, I think, was probably pretty high so hopefully that’s a sign that they’ll follow through,” he said. “That is if they can afford to live in the district after they graduate high school.”
