Early data from Elections Ontario suggests that the 2025 provincial election had around 45 per cent of eligible Ontarians cast their ballot, just a one percentage point higher turnout than the previous election.
As of Friday morning, the Elections Ontario website indicated slightly more than 5 million out of just over 11 million eligible voters chose to cast a ballot in Thursday’s election.
That’s around 45.4 per cent of eligible voters.
Elections Ontario pulled the data so far with 99.93 per cent of the polls reporting — 8,073 polling stations out of 8,079 — as of midnight on Friday.
Doug Ford won a third majority government on Thursday night. His Progressive Conservative party won 80 seats. The NDP won 27 seats and is once again the official Opposition. The Liberals won 14 seats to finally regain official party status. The Greens won two seats, and one seat went to an Independent.
For comparison, the last provincial election in 2022 marked the lowest voter turnout in election history, with 44 per cent of eligible voters casting their ballots. Elections Ontario said around 4.7 million out of 10.7 million eligible voters chose to cast a ballot in that election, held on June 2, 2022.
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The snap winter election this year shows voter turnout was only around one percentage point higher than in 2022. Under half a million more people showed up to vote this time around. Critics had suggested the unusual wintertime election would deter people from heading to the polls.
In contrast, the 2018 provincial election saw 57 per cent voter turnout, which was the highest voter turnout in over a decade at the time.
Other recent provincial election years saw anywhere from 48 per cent to 66 per cent voter turnout.
Meanwhile, in the advance voting period — just a three-day window on Feb. 20, 21 and 22 — only 678,789 Ontarians cast their ballot, a turnout of 6.14 per cent.
In previous provincial elections, 2022 saw 1,066,545 eligible voters (9.92 per cent) vote over a period of 10 advance days, and in 2018, 698,609 voters (6.8 per cent) cast their ballot over five days of advance voting.
Voter turnout figures were looming over the current election given the 2022 outcome. The last early election in Canada, which played out in Nova Scotia last fall, saw a new record low for voter turnout.
Elections Ontario still needs to officially certify the votes but the preliminary data was available on Friday.
— With files from Global News’ Aaron D’Andrea
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