Over 80,000 voted in advance polling across the three local ridings/stock photo Elections Canada

By Vernon Matters Staff

voter interest

Over 82,000 people have already voted across three local ridings

Apr 26, 2025 | 9:00 AM

With just days to go before Election Day on April 28, it appears the national and provincial popularity of Advance Voting over the four-day Easter Weekend was also the case across the three local ridings.

A total of 82,248 people made their mark in advance polling April 18-21, which suggests an increase over total early voting compared to the 2021 federal election. A total of 80,825 voted early four years ago.

However, it should also be noted that the boundaries of the various local ridings have changed since then, so direct mathematical comparisons aren’t possible.

In the Kelowna riding, Elections Canada said 25,406 electors showed up at the advance polls last weekend. In 2021, that number was slightly higher at 25,947, although the riding encompassed Lake Country back then.

In the Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna riding, a total of 29,483 people voted early. In 2021, the then riding of Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola saw 25,953 people turn up.

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And in the Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee riding, there were 27,359 early voters. In 2021, what was the Okanagan North-Shuswap riding totalled 28,925 early voters.

Elections Canada reported over 1.1 million advance voters in B.C. for this election, which equates to almost a 36 per cent jump compared to the early votes in the last general election.

Nationally, the agency said the nearly 7.3 million who voted early was 25 per cent more than the figure of around 5.8 million for 2021.

In the 2021 general election, 17,209,000 voted in total, for a turnout rate of 62.5 per cent.