Justin Trudeau got help from youth, new voters, social media in election win

To make it easier for youth to vote, Elections Canada pilot project set up advance polling stations on campuses, community centres.

Thestar.com
Oct. 23, 2015
By Robin Levinson King

Early numbers on voter turnout suggest that youth and first-time voters played a role in the outcome of this election.

More than 70,000 people, mostly youth, registered and voted at advance polling stations set-up at offices on campuses and community centres across the country.

The four-day pilot project was created by Elections Canada to make it easier for youth to vote.

“Elections Canada’s goal is to ensure that every Canadian who wishes to cast a ballot has an opportunity to do so,” said chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand in a press release. “I am pleased that our pilot project was so successful.”

It was clear from the start that getting youth to show up at the polls was a top priority, especially for the slew of anti-Harper campaigns that asked for youth to vote for “anyone but the Conservatives.”

Indie artists such as Grimes, Yukon Blonde and Hey Rosetta! offered up protest songs and free concerts to entice youth to vote. Raffi Cavoukian, the children’s music folk artist who serenaded many millennials with Baby Beluga when they were just tots, urged his now-grown fans to head to the polls on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

His election song “I Want My Canada Back!” got more than 250,000 views on Facebook and YouTube.

Social media played a huge role in the election campaign in general; voting selfies and election hashtags kept the election front and centre for thousands of people online.

Twitter reported that there were more than 770,000 election-related tweets on Election Day, including some 470,000-odd that used the hashtag #elxn42. Voting selfies, pictures of voters outside polling stations, became a trend, and about 400 people shared them on Twitter using the hashtags #votingselfie or #electionselfie.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau outpaced his competition on Twitter on Election Day as well; there were more than 150,000 tweets to @justintrudeau, whereas Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s account @pmharper only got 68,385. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair was a distant third, with 21,602 tweets to @thomasmulcair.

And data shows that new voters, including youth, played a key role in electing the Liberal Party. There were 17,559,353 ballots cast in 2015 during the election this year (not including those who registered on Election Day), compared to 14,823,408 ballots in 2011.

In 2011, the Liberals got only 2,783,076 votes. This time, they got 6,930,136 votes, about two-and-a-half times what they got last election. The NDP, Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois all had fewer votes this time around. Only the Green Party managed to increase its turnout, by about 33,000 votes, which was a 6 per cent increase.

The Conservatives lost 235,000 votes, a 4 per cent decline since 2011.