Advance voting in Okanagan Shuswap is well up over the last election, from 6,414 in 2008 to 8,265 this week.
But that won’t necessarily translate into a heavier voter turnout for the May 2 federal election.
“Monday was the busiest day across Canada everywhere,” says Elections Canada media rep Susan Friend. “This turnout at an advance poll was the heaviest ever.”
Friend cites several reasons for the increased activity at the advance polls in the constituency – good weather, people who are going to be out-of-town May 2, others who work shifts that will prevent them from going to the polls on Monday.
“It was a holiday, the weather was good,” she says. “And I understand there’s some pretty important hockey games going on.”
Even though numbers were substantially higher over the last election, Friend says it’s not really indicative of what’s going to happen on election day.
In the last election, 177, 400 voted in the advance poll in BC and that only translated into 10 per cent of total vote, she says.
“Traditionally it’s not an indicator of anything,” she says. “Elections Canada would love to see these kinds of numbers on elections.”
