Election may have made history, but turnout is more of the same
Over the next few weeks, the campaign run by Valérie Plante and the Projet Montréal slate of candidates she led to power will be analyzed in depth. But if history was indeed made on Sunday night with the election of Montreal’s first female mayor and a change of regime at city hall after just four years (an event that last occurred in 1960), one element of the formula remained sadly familiar: voter participation.
After the last of the 4,138 ballot boxes had been counted on Monday morning, the turnout rate was 42.46 per cent, 0.86 per cent lower than the rate recorded in 2013.
Monitoring of turnout over the course of Sunday saw the numbers grow, but not spectacularly as Montrealers did their civic duty.
By noon Sunday, turnout stood at 16.73 per cent, despite online exhortations from organizers of all parties that electors vote early to avoid the heavy rains of the afternoon. By 4 p.m. — four hours before polls closed — that number had grown to only 31.59 per cent.
“We’ll take a look at the final results,” Elections Montreal’s Pierre G. Laporte said. “But you have to remember people have the right to vote — or not to. That’s out of our control.”
Laporte acknowledged that given Sunday’s poor weather, hitting close to 2013’s turnout was an achievement of sorts. He also noted that since there were more voters on the 2017 electoral list (1,142,988) than in 2013 (1,101,998), more people cast ballots this time around, even if the rate remained relatively unchanged.
“Given that it appeared to be a tight race, one might have thought we’d see a bigger turnout.”