33% increase in advance voting turnout in 2022 Vancouver municipal election

The turnout for advance voting in the 2022 Vancouver civic election was significantly higher than the 2018 civic election.

On Friday, the City of Vancouver told Daily Hive Urbanized the preliminary figure for 2022’s advance turnout is 65,026 ballots. The municipal government notes this is an unofficial figure, as they still need to verify and audit information.

This advance turnout figure is 16,040 or 33% more than the 48,986 in 2018’s advance voting. This does not include the new option of mail-in voting for all eligible voters in 2022.

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It is too early to determine whether heightened voter interest was a contributing factor, but improved accessibility and convenience may be a factor as 2022’s advance voting saw nearly a doubling of locations compared to the 2018 civic election.

In 2018, there were eight consecutive days of advance voting at 12 locations.

The total number of locations for 2022 advance voting was 22. But the number of advance voting dates dropped to five — only on alternating days over the span of a week ending this past Thursday.

For further comparison, there were eight locations and eight dates for advance voting in the 2014 civic election, which saw over 38,400 advance ballots.

For today, general civic election voting day, there will be a total of 82 voting locations across Vancouver — down from 114 in 2018, and 117 in 2014. In 2018, the municipal government began adding homeless shelters and social service drop-in centres to its list of voting locations.

In the 2018 civic election, a total of 176,744 ballots were cast, and voter turnout was 39.4% — down from 43.4% in 2014, but up from 35% in 2011.

Forward Together incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart narrowly won his mayoral bid in 2018 as an independent, just 957 votes ahead of ABC Vancouver’s Ken Sim, who was representing the NPA at the time.

Today, voting stations will be open between 8 am and 8 pm. Results will begin to come in shortly after polls close.

You might also like:
• What you need to know to vote in Saturday’s municipal election
• This is the random order of all 137 candidates listed in Vancouver's civic election ballot
• Deadlock between Kennedy Stewart and Ken Sim in election-eve survey
• Here’s how top Vancouver mayoral candidates would tackle housing affordability
• Here’s how top Vancouver mayoral candidates would address crime in the city