Article content continued

But all those assumptions may need to be revisited in light of the report this week from Elections Canada documenting a hefty increase in the participation rate by younger voters in last fall’s federal election.

Almost three million more Canadians voted in October 2015 than in the 2011 federal election. British Columbia contributed heavily to the surge, accounting for almost half a million more votes.

Nationally, about 1.2 million of those additional ballots were cast by voters under the age of 35, making for an almost 20-point jump in turnout, to 57 per cent from 39 in the previous outing.

That was still not equal to the 70 per cent or better turnout by folks aged 55 and older, being mostly baby boomers and their parents.

But the jump was enough to suggest that younger generations of voters — call them millennials, generation X or what have you — had arrived.

Looking back to the 2013 B.C. election, only 42 per cent of registered voters under the age of 35 cast ballots. If they’d reached the 57 per cent participation rate of the federal campaign, another 100,000 would have voted, more than enough to have produced a different outcome.

But before getting too carried way with that line of thinking, one has to ask whether the federal trend was a one time thing or something that could carry over to the next provincial election as well.

Pollster Reid, on the eve of the federal vote, found that Canadians under the age of 35 were becoming more engaged in the political process and pointed to the likelihood (“we’re going to be surprised”) of higher turnouts on their part.