Advance voting numbers up as Vancouver's mayoral race tightens

More people have voted early in this year’s municipal election compared to the 2018 election, according to numbers from Vancouver and Surrey.

The City of Vancouver said that as of Friday 65,026 people had already cast their ballot, compared to 48,986 at the same time in 2018. That's an increase of 32.7 per cent, but still a small fraction of the roughly 450,000 people registered to vote in the city.

The City of Surrey said 35,713 had already voted there as of Friday, a 61-per-cent increase from the same time in 2018.

Stewart Prest, a political scientist at Quest University, believes the high turnout in Surrey is due to controversies, including incumbent mayor Doug McCallum’s public mischief charge.

“The current mayor and council is embattled, to put it mildly,” Prest said. “I think there’s a real appetite for change and so more people are paying attention than would otherwise have done.”

But overall, the increase in early voting may not lead to bigger turnouts overall, according to former Vancouver city councillor and CTV political contributor George Affleck.

“Generally, people who vote in advance voting are people who are going to vote anyway,” he said, adding there could be a number of reasons why people don’t end up voting at all, including the weather.

“If it’s sunny, like it is right now, that’s not good. It could hurt the numbers,” he said.

Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., believes the overwhelming number of names on the ballot could also be a turn off this year. In Vancouver, there are 137 total candidates for the offices of mayor, council, park board and school board.

“We did a survey for the City of Vancouver four years ago and one of the reasons cited (for not voting) is this is just too confusing,” Canseco said.

VANCOUVER MAYORAL RACE TIGHTENS

The latest poll by Research Co. has the two frontrunners for mayor of Vancouver exactly neck and neck.

According to the poll, both Kennedy Stewart and Ken Sim have 33 per cent of the vote, followed by Colleen Hardwick (16 per cent), Mark Marrissen and Fred Harding (both at eight per cent).

The results are based on an online survey of 344 decided voters conducted on Oct. 13 and 14. The margin of error is +/- 5.3 percentage points.