Calgary municipal election marked by lower voter turnout
CBC
Turnout was down in the 2025 Calgary municipal election, with 39 per cent of eligible electors casting a ballot, a decline from the 46 per cent who voted in 2021, according to official results from the city.
In total, 349,815 of the 896,042 eligible electors (as of Sept. 16) voted in the election.
About 90,000 of those ballots were cast during advance voting.
The official results show Jeromy Farkas winning the mayoral race with 581 more votes than Sonya Sharp. Sharp has now requested a recount.
In 2021, there were 393,090 voters, representing a 46 per cent turnout of eligible electors. Turnout was 58 per cent in 2017, and 39 per cent in 2013, according to the City of Calgary.
Pollster Janet Brown of Janet Brown Opinion Research had expected an even worse turnout this year than what the final results ended up showing.
"In those last few days, I think the message was getting out there to the public that it was going to be a close race — too close to call — and it looked like a lot of Calgarians started paying attention at the last minute," said Brown.
Throughout the campaign, experts highlighted what seemed to be lower voter engagement, whether that be due to other issues competing for their attention (read: teachers' strike) or confusion about the introduction of municipal political parties.
That uncertainty was something Mount Royal University policy studies professor Lori Williams heard time and time again.
"I did a few public talks on the election and probably the most common question I got was: 'Well, what do parties mean? What do these parties stand for? What kind of money can they access?'" said Williams.
Add to that the longer-than-normal wait times at the polls after a slew of provincial legislative changes that included the requirement to create a register of permanent electors and mandated hand counting of ballots.
For some, those lineups were enough to see them turn around and go home.
"I'm almost 80, and I can say that I voted in every election in my life except this one. I went to vote, I saw the line, and I decided not to vote as a protest," Calgarian Terry Golbeck told CBC Radio's Alberta at Noon when he called in Wednesday.
Williams worries about would-be voters who had the intention of casting a ballot, but ended up having to abandon the line because they simply could not wait.
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