Here we go – a snap election for September 20. Everyone has heard the saying “if you don’t vote, don’t complain”. Or something to that effect.
Voter turnout has been on a downward spiral since the first federal election in 1867. According to Elections Canada: the average voter turnout for Canada’s general elections since 1867 has been 70.7 per cent; the highest voter turnouts were in 1958, 1960, and 1963, when voter turnout was over 79 per cent; the lowest voter turnout on record was in 2008, when voter turnout fell to only 58.8 per cent. Voter turnout in the 2011 federal election, at 61.4 per cent, was the third lowest in Canadian history and voter turnout rose in 2015 to 66.1 per cent, the highest turnout since 1993. In 2019, the overall federal voter turnout increased by 0.9 of a percentage point to 67.0 per cent from 66.1 per cent in 2015.
