B.C. advanced voter turnout soars by almost 70 per cent over last election

A record-shattering 614,389 people cast their ballots in advance of the B.C. election on May 9, almost double the number who did so in 2013.

The data from Elections B.C. show just about one in five registered voters headed to the polls early this year while advanced voting was open from April 28 to May 6, two days longer than in 2013.

It is the largest number of advanced voters recorded since Elections B.C. began tracking the data in 1996.

But strong advance turnout doesn’t always translate to high voter turnout in the election.

While advance turnout was high in 2013, 57.1 per cent of registered voters cast ballots that year, representing the second-lowest share of voters going back to 1928.

This year, there were 3,156,991 registered voters as of April 11, about 20,000 people shy of the number of registered voters in the 2013 election.

Esquimalt-Metchosin was the riding that saw the most advanced voters, with just over 29 per cent of registered voters casting their ballot in advance. The district was an NDP stronghold in the 2013 election with Maurine Karagianis winning 48 per cent of the vote over the Liberals’ 28 per cent.

Coquitlam-Maillardville also saw significant advance voting turnout at almost 27 per cent. In 2013, the district went to the NDP’s Selina Robinson by an extremely slim margin of only 41 votes over the Liberals.

Another battleground riding, Saanich North and the Islands, also saw high advance voter turnout at almost 27 per cent. Last election, the riding was almost a direct three-way tie between the NDP, Liberals and Greens with the NDP’s Gary Holman ultimately winning the district by 163 votes.

—With files from Jesse Ferreras