Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Toronto Election Turnout 2006

The Globe and Mail is reporting 41.1% turnout for this election, up from previous years. I suggest that reporters, when faced with surprising numbers, need to ask some questions rather than just accepting things at face value.

For a comparison, here are the number of votes cast in all of the four mayoral elections since Toronto amalgamation.

1997:

Mel Lastman: 383,848
Barbara Hall: 346,452

(Total: 749,897)

2000:

Mel Lastman: 483,277
Tooker Gomberg: 51,111
Enza Anderson: 13,595

(Total: 604,394)

2003:

David Miller: 299,385
John Tory: 263,189
Barbara Hall: 63,751
John Nunziata: 36,021

(Total: 692,085)

2006:

David Miller: 332,969
Jane Pitfield: 188,932

(Total: 584,484)

This is clearly the lowest total of any year, and of course there have been population increases.

If the "turnout" seems to be high, then the count of eligible voters is probably way off.

2 Comments:

At 6:09 PM, Blogger Mark Dowling said...

this is undoubtedly due to the reduction (I think 250k?) in the electoral register this time round.

 
At 7:21 PM, Blogger talk talk talk / Shireen said...

Interesting numbers. Thank you for compiling them.

 

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