As of October 23rd, over a million early birds had flocked to the polls in British Columbia – 681,055 at advance polls and almost 500,000 vote-by-mail packages have already been received. Combined, that’s over half the amount that voted in 2017 when about 2 million flew to the polls, mainly on Election Day.
Province-wide, about 33% of registered voters have voted or their mail ballots have already been received. Last election, the voter turnout was 61% – so, likely half of the ballots this time are already in. The percentage of early bird voters will increase as mail ballots continue to arrive prior to Saturday at 8pm.
I looked at early birds riding-by-riding by calculating the percentage of advance poll voters per riding and adding the estimated number of mail ballots received per riding (as of October 22) to determine number of early bird voters. (The estimate of mail ballots is Mail Packages requested * 54% – the amount returned by October 22, province-wide). UPDATE – the number of mail ballots received as of October 23 is now 478,900 (66% of packages requested).
Where are the early birds? It looks like they are nesting on the Island. Two of the top three early bird ridings in BC elected Greens in 2017.
| Riding (Colour coded by winning party, 2017) | Adv% | Mail ballot return estimate | Combined Advance+Mail (est.) Oct 22 |
| Parksville-Qualicum | 26% | 16% | 42% (now 46%, Oct 23) |
| Saanich North & Islands | 24% | 18% | 41% |
| Oak Bay Gordon Head | 20% | 21% | 41% |
| Esquimalt-Metchosin | 25% | 16% | 41% |
| Vancouver Pt. Grey | 24% | 17% | 41% |
| Victoria Beacon Hill | 18% | 21% | 39% |
| Courtenay-Comox | 24% | 14% | 39% |
| Victoria Swan Lake | 21% | 18% | 38% |
| North Van Seymour | 22% | 16% | 38% |
| Saanich South | 19% | 19% | 38% |
| Vancouver Fairview | 19% | 18% | 37% |
| Boundary Similkameen | 29% | 8% | 37% |
| Delta South | 24% | 13% | 37% |
| Surrey White Rock | 23% | 14% | 37% |
| Penticton | 25% | 11% | 36% |
| Langford-Juan de Fuca | 22% | 14% | 36% |
| North Van Lonsdale | 23% | 13% | 36% |
| Cowichan Valley | 24% | 12% | 36% |
| Vancouver West End | 21% | 14% | 35% |
| Nanaimo-North Cowichan | 23% | 12% | 35% |
| West Van Sea to Sky | 24% | 10% | 34% |
| West Van Capilano | 20% | 14% | 34% |
| Port Moody Coquitlam | 18% | 15% | 33% |
| Nanaimo | 20% | 13% | 33% |
| Kelowna Mission | 23% | 10% | 33% |
| Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows | 22% | 11% | 33% |
| Burnaby Lougheed | 21% | 12% | 33% |
| New Westminster | 18% | 14% | 33% |
| Vancouver Quilchena | 17% | 16% | 32% |
| Surrey Fleetwood | 23% | 9% | 32% |
| Langley East | 20% | 12% | 32% |
| Columbia River Revelstoke | 25% | 6% | 32% |
| Port Coquitlam | 19% | 12% | 32% |
| Surrey South | 18% | 13% | 31% |
| Shuswap | 23% | 7% | 31% |
| Vancouver False Creek | 16% | 15% | 31% |
| Kootenay East | 25% | 6% | 31% |
| Surrey Cloverdale | 18% | 12% | 31% |
| Coquitlam Maillardville | 19% | 11% | 31% |
| Kelowna Lake Country | 20% | 10% | 31% |
| Mid Island-Pacific Rim | 21% | 9% | 30% |
| Coquitlam Burke Mtn | 19% | 12% | 30% |
| Cariboo Chilcotin | 23% | 7% | 30% |
| Kelowna West | 21% | 9% | 30% |
| Nelson Creston | 22% | 8% | 30% |
| Langley | 19% | 11% | 30% |
| Chilliwack Kent | 20% | 10% | 30% |
| Powell River Sunshine Coast | 18% | 11% | 29% |
| Maple Ridge Mission | 19% | 11% | 29% |
| Fraser Nicola | 24% | 5% | 29% |
| Burnaby North | 17% | 12% | 29% |
| Delta North | 19% | 10% | 29% |
| Richmond Steveston | 16% | 13% | 29% |
| Surrey Panorama | 18% | 10% | 29% |
| Abbotsford Mission | 19% | 9% | 28% |
| Vernon-Monashee | 19% | 9% | 28% |
| Vancouver Hastings | 15% | 13% | 28% |
| Abbotsford West | 21% | 7% | 28% |
| Skeena | 23% | 5% | 28% |
| Kamloops North Thompson | 18% | 10% | 28% |
| North Island | 18% | 10% | 28% |
| Vancouver Fraserview | 15% | 12% | 28% |
| Vancouver Langara | 14% | 13% | 27% |
| Richmond Queensborough | 18% | 9% | 27% |
| Vancouver Kensington | 15% | 13% | 27% |
| Abbotsford South | 18% | 9% | 27% |
| Kamloops South Thompson | 20% | 7% | 26% |
| PG Valemount | 19% | 7% | 26% |
| Vancouver Kingsway | 16% | 11% | 26% |
| PG Mackenzie | 19% | 7% | 26% |
| Peace North | 23% | 3% | 26% |
| Vancouver Mt Pleasant | 13% | 13% | 26% |
| Surrey Guildford | 17% | 9% | 26% |
| Chilliwack | 17% | 8% | 26% |
| Cariboo North | 20% | 5% | 26% |
| Kootenay West | 18% | 7% | 24% |
| Burnaby Deer Lake | 14% | 10% | 24% |
| Stikine | 19% | 5% | 24% |
| Surrey Newton | 15% | 9% | 23% |
| Burnaby Edmonds | 12% | 10% | 22% |
| Surrey Green Timbers | 14% | 8% | 21% |
| Surrey Whalley | 14% | 7% | 21% |
| Richmond South Centre | 11% | 10% | 21% |
| Peace South | 18% | 2% | 21% |
| Richmond North Centre | 10% | 10% | 20% |
| North Coast | 16% | 3% | 19% |
| Nechako Lakes | 9% | 4% | 12% |
| Total | 19.4% | 11% (now 14%, as of Oct 23) | 30% (now 33%, Oct 23) |
It appears the advance polls of Michelle Stilwell’s riding were more densely packed than a Fanny Bay oyster bed. Just to be clear, the voter turnout there is already over 45% and they haven’t even got to Election Day. I realize that many ‘experienced’ voters on the Island like to go to bed after the 5:30pm Chek 6 News, but I’m beginning to wonder if they voted early in order to sleep through the entire weekend.
It’s not just Parksville-Qualicum, 7 of 8 early bird ridings are on the Island. By God, democracy is alive and well over there. There are probably a few factors at play:
- The Island has an older population compared to rest of BC, and it has been clearly shown that older people are more likely to vote.
- The Island population is not particularly diverse. In ridings with high populations of non-English speakers, language can be a barrier to participation. In fact, highly diverse ridings like Richmond North Centre, Richmond South Centre, Surrey Newton, and Surrey-Green Timbers have among the lowest early bird totals.
- The Greens are much stronger on the Island, which helps boost turnout due to increased competition.
(Bryan Breguet – Too Close Too Call website – did some interesting analysis here and here. He spent more time number crunching.)
Northern ridings Nechako Lakes and North Coast are the bottom two. They appear to be saving it for Election Day. Stikine and Skeena had higher advance turnouts but low mail participation.
The top advance poll riding was Boundary-Similkameen (29% of registered voters), though they weren’t as big on mail there. Oak Bay-Gordon Head was huge on mail (#1), and had a pretty solid advance poll too.
There is some correlation to high turnout ridings voting early, however, that is not uniform. I looked at turnout in 2017 and it is not straightforward correlation between overall turnout and early turnout. You can see from the table above that there is quite a bit of variation between advance and mail. Rural ridings have a different pattern than urban, the Island is different, etc.
Is there a pattern here? Does this signal a partisan advantage? Public polls breathlessly report that vote-by-mail and/or advance voters are leaning this or that way. If that is the case, and early voters are skewed differently than general election day voters, then that factor will be more at play in the top half of the list than the bottom. In other words, ridings with a higher percentage of votes yet to be cast are potentially more volatile.
What’s the big lesson? Early bird gets the worm? With an estimated half-million early bird votes to be counted after Election Day, I would say don’t count your chickens late November.
Rosedeer 
Fascinating for us political junkies. Probably sleep-inducing for the majority of British Columbians (and how long will that name –‘British Columbians’ — last?)
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