Getting Canada’s youngest voters to the polls has proven increasingly challenging in recent decades, and in 2011, an abysmal 39 per cent of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 cast a ballot.

But a few determined people are working to turn things around in 2015, and the long lines at the University of British Columbia’s pop-up polling stations last week were evidence that it may be working. In just three days of campus pop-up polling across the country, more than 43,000 young people cast a ballot.

READ MORE: To boost youth vote, Elections Canada brings ballots to students

Jude Crasta, organizer of UBC’s Champion the Vote program, told The West Block‘s Tom Clark that he thinks that given how close the race has been, young people feel they have the opportunity to actually make a difference this time around. The usual grand-standing from party leaders has been accompanied by “actual tangible promises” and hard numbers, he said, and the outcome is still far from certain.

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“The fact that it’s so close, and being told that a couple of votes could swing a riding, or the fact that strategic voting is now a thing … a lot of people are like, wait, so you’re saying that if I show up over there for five minutes between class, I might have a different government on October twentieth?” Crasta explained. “It’s a lot more tantalizing, I would say, to people than being told that that’s your prime minister, deal with it.”

Champion the Vote is only one of many recent initiatives aimed at getting younger voters to the polls.

WATCH: Turn Up YVR offers entertainment, transport to eligible young voters

