Voter turnout in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell was up slightly in last week’s election compared with the previous provincial vote in 2022. But for the second straight time, fewer than half the eligible voters in the riding cast their ballots — a significant drop from the 2018 Ontario election.
Even with an election called in response to Ontario and Canada’s high-profile clash over tariffs with U.S. President Donald Trump, voter turnout across the province did not increase significantly from the previous election.
Just 48.37 per cent of the total number of eligible voters showed up to vote in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, which includes some Ottawa residents living in the former Cumberland township at the eastern edge of the city.
Voter turnout in Ottawa’s nine ridings averaged 46.08 per cent in the Feb. 27 election.
The level of engagement was not very different from the 2022 election, which made history across Ontario for the lowest voter turnout of 44.06 per cent. If the portion of people who did not vote had a political party of their own, they would have won the election handily.
Turnout was a record low in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell in 2022, as well, with 44,724 casting ballots, about 46 per cent.
In 2018, voter turnout was 55.42 per cent, with 49,341 voters out of 89,035 eligible voters going to the polls. In 2014, the turnout was 53.36 per cent.
In this election in Ottawa, Glengarry-Prescott-Russell had one of the higher turnouts, ranking third of nine for voter participation.
The majority in the Glengarry-Prescott-Russell riding voted for Progressive Conservative candidate Stéphane Sarrazin. It was one of two in the Ottawa area, along with Carleton, to go to the governing PCs.
The Conservatives won a third majority government and 80 seats.
Sarrazin’s 24,618 votes were 6,766 more than runner-up Trevor Stewart of the Liberals, who collected 17,752 votes. But out of 99,000 eligible voters, only about 48,000 voted, and 51,000 people who had the opportunity to vote did not.
Hypothetically, if the Liberals had convinced one out of every eight or so of the non-voters to make the trip to a polling station, they could have won.
Yet the Liberals had considerably more votes than the NDP; New Democrat candidate Ryder Findlay received only 2,384 votes. The riding’s results reflected a province-wide trend, with the Liberals finishing second in most ridings, gaining far more province-wide popular support than the NDP, but still winning fewer seats (14) than the NDP (27), which remains the official opposition. The Green Party won two seats.
