It appears the vast majority of Londoners could not be bothered to vote in Monday’s municipal election after the city recorded a new low for voter turnout.
Initial estimates from the City of London’s website pegs voter turnout at roughly 25 per cent. The last municipal election, in 2018, drew a voter turnout of 39 per cent, while 2014 drew 43 per cent.
Beyond who won and who lost, for Jacquie Newman, a political scientist at King’s University College, voter turnout is the real story of London’s 2022 election.
“It would appear that a lot of Londoners didn’t feel that they had a particular stake in this campaign and showed that by not showing up at the polls,” Newman said.
Newman says this year’s campaign lacked a galvanizing issue to get voters to the polls, such as bus rapid transit in 2018 and concerns about the Fontana 8, a voting bloc centred around former Mayor Joe Fontana, in the election prior.
“Unfortunately, homelessness and housing affordability didn’t really provide that, and it didn’t help also that the candidates didn’t really frame themselves as being widely divergent on those issues,” Newman said.
“It really does end up being people looking at this and going kind of, ‘meh.'”
Mayor-elect Josh Morgan says he expected to see a lower voter turnout than previous elections after similar showings during recent provincial and federal races, adding that “municipal’s always the lowest of the three.”
Morgan says the low turnout leaves him and his council colleagues with “important work to do.”
“To reach out to Londoners across the city, to involve them in the decision-making of our council, to ensure that we do a lot of outreach when we bring forward major new policies and initiatives to align those with the priorities of Londoners,” Morgan added.
“The people who participated in the election are the ones who did, but all Londoners deserve a voice and a say at this next city council.”
Early numbers from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario show 36 per cent turnout across the 301 of 444 municipalities that held local elections Monday.
Voter turnout in Ontario’s 2018 municipal elections was 38.3 per cent provincially, the lowest among municipal election turnouts recorded since 1982.
— with files from The Canadian Press