Nice weather. Check.

Competitive mayoral race. Check.

Emotionally charged issues. Check.

So, what gives with Calgary’s low voter turnout in the 2025 municipal election?

Unofficially, 348,626 votes were cast in the Calgary mayoral race. That’s down more than 41,000 from the 2021 Calgary municipal election, or nearly 11 per cent (390,090). In that mayoral race, there were 27 candidates, but only a handful of legitimate threats.

In the 2021 race, eventual winner Jyoti Gondek had 176,344 votes on her own. This time around, the top two contenders, so far, have a combined 181,545.

While Calgary’s turnout numbers thus far have tanked in comparison with 2021, what went up was the population. The 2021 federal census had Calgary pegged at 1.3 million citizens. As we heard throughout much of the municipal election campaign, Calgary has dealt with massive population growth. Some have pegged the city’s population at more than 1.6 million.

Alex Middleton, principal with Champion Communications and PR in Calgary, and consultant for a number of 2025 Calgary municipal campaigns, said that influx of new citizens wouldn’t necessarily mean an increase in overall voter turnout.

“We have an influx of people coming in from different cities across the country, and I think the reality is that, regardless of what you’re reading in the media, I think a lot of these people, and a lot of Calgarians, are kind of thinking the city is running OK,” he told LWC.

Middleton said one big difference between this election and the last election was that there were no longer any massive, lingering infrastructure projects. Last election, Calgary had huge projects hanging in the balance that candidates campaigned on: The Green Line and the Events Centre.

UCalgary political scientist Lisa Young said that seeing the election turnout this low was troubling. Particularly because the eventual mayoral winner could have 10 per cent—or less—of eligible voting Calgarians in their corner.

“We want elections to reflect the views of the electorate, and when you’ve got… a third or thereabouts of eligible voters casting their ballot, that sort of says that you’ve got some kind of a problem,” she told LWC.

“It also means for whoever’s elected that they’ve got a very limited mandate, in some ways.”

Difficult to pinpoint who showed up, who didn’t, said Young

Elections Calgary had provided regular updates throughout the day on the voter turnout, noting that just less than half of the stations were reporting wait times of 20 minutes or less.

“Some stations are experiencing longer wait times. Voting stations tend to be busiest when they first open and in the late afternoon and evening hours,” read the 7:47 p.m. news release.

Reports throughout the evening had some voters waiting in line for more than an hour to cast a ballot. Elections Calgary included a broader explanation of the process in its 10 p.m. news release.

They said election workers had to check if a person was eligible, based on the Permanent Electors Register (PER), which was a new legislative requirement. They also had to update the PER if a person’s personal information had changed.

“Any voter who wished to vote in a trustee election, who was not on the PER, or who did not have government-issued photo ID also had to make a statement,” they said.

Young said that while it’s difficult to nail down who specifically voted and who didn’t, there could be a link to one’s time available and willingness to vote. That could come down to schedule flexibility, potential retirees or strength of feelings about voting, and desire to wait in a lineup.

“There are certainly some differences between what we see in polling numbers from a couple of weeks ago and the outcome,” she said.

“Maybe votes shifted in the interim, maybe who was able to go and cast a ballot, who was motivated enough to go and cast a ballot, is also playing into that.”

Though it may have been a competitive mayoral race by name recognition, the perceived lack of a defining issue could also have dampened voter turnout, Young said.

Fragmentation of media

Both Young and Middleton noted that a shrinking local news environment could also be influencing the level of awareness around Calgary’s municipal election. Anecdotally, some campaigns told LWC they were receiving donations even on election day as the campaign had finally reached the radar of prospective voters.

Others had told LWC that when they were door-knocking in their wards, it was news to many Calgarians that a municipal election was even being held.

“Traditional media is struggling to reach people these days,” Middleton said.

“I think people are turned off by a lot of the negativity in the media. But I also think that social media, unlike in the last two Calgary municipal campaigns, is not playing a role. Twitter is not as impactful as it once was.”

Young said that with fewer people accessing mainstream media, awareness may have been lower overall. Being in an environment where less local news is being covered means an information void.

People’s attention was also being pulled in several different directions, Young said. Political and economic tension with the United States, the Alberta political scene—including the Alberta teachers’ strike—may have impacted willingness to vote and overall awareness.

“In this highly fractured media environment where people are getting their news in all sorts of different ways that are very much driven by algorithms and other factors, and so older homeowners might have been quite engaged by some of the issues in this election, but younger potential voters, I think, in particular, had their attention pulled in many different directions,” she said.

Elections Calgary will be providing more details on vote numbers later Tuesday evening once all of the advanced votes and mail-in ballots are tallied.