Advance polls bring in more than 100,000 ballots in Calgary
More than 100,000 ballots have been cast in advance polls for this month's civic election, which is nearly one-quarter of all the votes collected in the 2017 general election.
The City of Calgary released new data on advance polling Saturday evening and it said 23,080 votes were submitted that day.
The total turnout to date is 104,118 – a figure that's already well beyond the number of advance votes in the 2017 general election (74,985).
According to the Elections Calgary website, 387,581 voters submitted ballots in 2017. That's 58.1 per cent of the total number of electors.
While the exact reason why votes are flocking to the polls now isn't entirely clear, some political experts maintain the COVID-19 pandemic is playing a role.
Marc Henry, president of ThinkHQ, says Calgarians who responded to a recent poll released by his organization are still cautious about potential areas of infection.
"You avoid the crowd and the lineup," he told CTV News on Saturday. "The federal election was a bit fatiguing for voters, you've got things going on with COVID (and) you got the province sort of imploding."
Advance polls are open until 3 p.m.
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