The real reason people didn’t vote in Ontario municipal elections: It wasn’t ‘voter fatigue’, experts say
A fraction of Toronto’s eligible voters turned out to take part in Monday’s municipal election, according to available numbers. A little less than 30 per cent of people qualified to vote took to the ballots to elect a new mayor, city councillors and school trustees, though full election numbers are expected later in the week.
Vancouver, which had its municipal election earlier this month, also saw a lower than usual turnout, with a reported 36.3 per cent showing up to the polls, down from 39 per cent in 2018. Experts say it has little to do with so-called “voter fatigue” and more to do with the nature of municipal elections, which are non-partisan and tend to be overcrowded with candidates.
Lack of Team Red or Team Blue in smaller races
Renan Levine is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He says non-partisan elections tend to have lower turnout except in exceptional circumstances that involve big names, like the Toronto 2014 municipal election, which saw current Toronto Mayor John Tory up against Ontario’s current Premier Doug Ford and former NDP Member of Parliament Olivia Chow.
“Many voters miss the signal from Team Red or Team Blue,” says Levine. “And many campaigns struggle to be competitive without the campaign knowledge and resources that parties tend to bring to candidates. So, fewer voters are readily engaged and campaigns have a harder time reaching and motivating voters, which just reduces voter engagement further.”
On top of that, the number of high profile races, like Toronto and Mississauga’s mayors, were not competitive, which further decreased voter attention and motivation to participate. In open races that were competitive, many voters had a hard time deciding who to support, coupled with the large number of candidates, which also tends to reduce turnout.
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Renters vs. buyers make difference at the polls
Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus of political science at University of Toronto, says there didn’t appear to be an appetite for change for the mayoral position, and voters weren’t expecting many surprises.
The housing crisis also appears to have made an impact on voter turnout. The current trend for Toronto is more renters, compared to property owners, who tend to vote more so than tenants.
“The base of the city finance is the property tax,” he says. “They have to pay the tax. Tenants don’t see the tax because it’s built into their rent. So if you move into a new ward, you don’t know who the councillor is and you may not care because you’re only going to live there for a year.”
Wiseman adds that in Ontario, federal elections tend to have more of a voter turnout than provincial elections, which have more of a turnout than municipal elections. He says this is a direct result of not having parties involved.
“If you had parties then people might not know the official candidates but which candidate is affiliated with which party, and they know what the party stands for, so you've got product differentiation and they stand for different things,” he says. “With municipal politics, normally they all stand for the same things.”
