VANCOUVER—Voter turnout slouched in Monday’s federal election compared to 2015, but climate change and union volunteers may have propped up the numbers in British Columbia hot spots.

Overall voter turnout for Canada’s 43rd general election slid just below two-thirds of eligible voters at 65.95 per cent, more than a two-point drop from the 2015 turnout. In B.C., the difference was greater — turnout fell to 65.02 per cent, compared to 70 per cent in 2015.

But the turnout was far from uniform across the province. The lowest was in Richmond Centre, with just more than half of registered voters turning up to the polls. The highest was in Saanich—Gulf Islands, the riding represented by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, where 73 per cent of voters cast a ballot.

“Elizabeth May’s riding was also the highest last time around,” said Mario Canseco, a president of polling company Research Co. “It’s a group of people who know what they like, who vote for it and take nothing for granted.”

Canseco’s exit polling, based on a survey of 803 adults who voted in the 43rd election weighted to census figures (margin of error: plus or minus 3.5 per cent 19 times out of 20), found that the biggest motivators for voters to get to the polls were ideas and issues the parties differed on.

Canseco said climate change was likely the ballot-box issue for people in Saanich—Gulf islands and other Vancouver Island ridings, all seven of which had higher than average voter turnout.

“It’s not that they became engaged in this after Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic,” he said. “They were already there.”

Local volunteers for May told Star Vancouver earlier this month that the climate crisis was their main motivation for working long hours on the campaign.

“Sometimes I reunite her with her dog at 11 o’clock at night,” said Shelagh Levey, a retired schoolteacher who worked as a volunteer for May during the campaign, helping with canvassing and also looking after May’s dog, Xo.

Levey explained that her dedication to May came from feeling “it’s now or never” for Canadian governments to begin treating climate change as the serious issue it is.

Demographics — Vancouver Island has a higher average age than other parts of the province — also play a role in the high turnout there, since older Canadians are more likely to vote.

“The ridings at the high end tend to be ridings with older populations,” said Richard Johnston, a Canadian politics professor at the University of British Columbia. “Independent of everything else, individuals become more likely to turn out as they get older.”

Higher education levels, and lower proportions of new immigrants also tend to correspond to higher turnout, Johnston said. All factors could be applied to ridings on the island.

Johnston said the strong union movement on the Vancouver Island — with public sector unions concentrated in Victoria and private sector union members distributed throughout the island’s forestry and mill towns — also plays a role.

“We devalue the union movement, but the healthiest democracies in the world have strong union movements,” Johnston said. “It’s part of the story of getting people to the ballot boxes.”

Declining union membership, along with declining organizational power of the Catholic Church, can both explain an overall drop in Canada’s voter turnout since the 1940s. Those institutions, he said, as well as the large, underemployed female population available to volunteer, and the traceability of people who lived in single family homes have been key in the past in going door-to-door to canvass and get out the vote.

Party volunteers also still play a role in voter turnout. Canseco said the high numbers in North Vancouver may have been the product of a get-out-the-vote effort by the Liberals.

“The Liberals wanted to fight to keep the ministers that they have,” he said. “I think it speaks a little bit about the effort to get out the vote in places where they actually need it.”

In North Vancouver, that meant getting out the vote for fisheries and oceans minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

On the other hand, Vancouver South, where defence minister Harjit Sajjan held onto his seat, had the fifth lowest turnout of any riding in the province.

Canseco saw this as voters responding with ambivalence to campaigns where the main focus was on negative messaging.

The Conservatives, for example, tried to court outer-suburban voters with negative messages about Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax — a strategy that seems to have worked in some places, but may not have been enough to inspire large swaths of voters to get out to the polls in the rain.

Hillary Tam, who identified herself as a millennial voter, ventured out in the pouring rain to vote in Vancouver South Monday evening. She said there were few valid excuses not to cast a ballot.

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“I think people should be motivated,” Tam said. “It’s not snowing … get out and do your civic duty.”

Top five B.C. ridings by voter turnout

1. Saanich—Gulf Islands, 73.12 per cent (Winner: Elizabeth May, Green Party)

2. Kootenay-Columbia, 72.37 per cent (Winner: Rob Morrison, Conservative Party)

3. Victoria, 71.51 per cent (Winner: Laurel Collins, NDP)

4. Courtenay-Alberni, 70.81 per cent (Winner: Gord Johns, NDP)

5. North Vancouver, 70.11 per cent (Winner: Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal)

Bottom five B.C. ridings by voter turnout

1. Richmond Centre, 51.93 per cent (Winner: Alice Wong, Conservative)

2. Surrey Centre, 53.6 per cent (Winner: Randeep Singh Sarai, Liberal)

3. Steveston—Richmond East, 55.64 per cent (Winner: Kenny Chiu, Conservative)

4. Burnaby South, 55.98 per cent (Winner: Jagmeet Singh, NDP)

5. Vancouver South, 57.22 per cent (Winner: Harjit Sajjan, Liberal)

With a file from Jeremy Nuttall

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