A hotly contested mayor’s race, sunny skies and efforts to spark the vote in New Westminster translated into more voters on election day.
Depending on which figures you want to believe, turnout for the 2014 civic election is either 32.5 per cent or 28.46 per cent.
“It was really an excellent turnout,” said Isabelle Hadford, the city’s chief election officer. “I was really excited to see all the people come out to vote. There were lineups everywhere. There was a lot of interest generated. The lineups started right at 8 o’clock in the morning and went all day. There was a lot of interest in it. It was really exciting to see that people were so interested in coming out to vote.”
Hadford said there were a lot of new registrations on election day, but she didn’t have the figure available. All totaled, 14,564 people cast votes in New Westminster.
Hadford said the city’s practice has always been to calculate voter turnout on the total number of registered voters. With city figures showing 44,768 registered voters, the turnout would be 32.5 per cent.
Civic Info B.C., however, used census figures to calculate turnout. With census data showing 51,166 eligible voters, the turnout would be 28.46 per cent,
“There’s some debate on that. We have a different number than Civic Info B.C.,” Hadford said. “We have the number of registered voters at 44,768. That was from our voters list. Civic Info B.C. has a different amount. They have generated their number through census.”
Either way, more people voted in the 2014 civic election than in 2011, when 10,614 people (23.45 per cent) voted. It also exceeds the 23.86 per cent turnout in 2008 and the 25.84 per cent turnout in 2005.
“Thank you for all the electorate coming out and voting,” Hadford said. “That was great.”
Civic Info B.C. states that the average turnout in B.C. municipalities was 33.3 per cent.
