Low municipal election voter turnout not a concern for these Quebec towns

MONTREAL — The historic village of Calixa-Lavallée is named after the man who composed the Canadian national anthem, so perhaps it’s no surprise its residents take their civic duty seriously.

While nearby Montreal reported a voter turnout of 37 per cent in Sunday’s municipal elections, more than 78 per cent of the registered voters in the off-island, 500-person South Shore suburb showed up to cast a ballot.

“Citizen participation here is always very strong, and this year was especially remarkable,” said Pénélope Larose, the town’s general manager.

“We’re a small municipality, so people know each other, they take an interest in what is happening, and they get actively involved in community life.”

Data released by Quebec’s Municipal Affairs Department shows that voter turnout across the province was up, to 41.3 per cent compared to 38.7 per cent in 2021. But more than two dozen towns far surpassed the average, reporting voter turnout of over 70 per cent, according to Elections Canada data. About a half a dozen towns surpassed 80 per cent.

Representatives from the high-voting municipalities — most of them small towns of less than 1,000 people — attribute their success to their close-knit nature, the effort made by candidates, and to competitive races after years of candidates running unopposed.

Calixa-Lavallée is one of those places. Larose says these were the “biggest elections in 20 years,” with races for mayor and all six council spots. In 2021, all the candidates were elected by acclamation.

“We saw a real surge of enthusiasm with several opinions and different visions that were expressed,” she said.

It’s a similar story in Lac-Édouard, in the Mauricie region, where just over 80 per cent of voters showed up to cast a ballot for one of the two candidates vying to replace the outgoing mayor of 20 years.

That mayor, Larry Bernier, said he’d been elected by acclamation for each of his five terms. He thinks the high voter turnout is due partly to the small size of the town — around 200 residents — but also the chance to vote for new faces.

“I thought I could maybe make some room for others,” said Bernier. The almost 80-year-old describes his successor as a dynamic “young lady” in her 50’s.

“It’s a good thing that there were two candidates instead of just one, because that’s democracy,” he said in a phone interview.

Thierry Giasson, a political science professor at Université Laval, says a number of different factors can affect voter turnout, including the perceived competitiveness of the race.

The data from the province shows that towns with 2,000 citizens or less vote in higher percentages than their big-city counterparts, which Giasson said might be due in part to greater social pressure.

“When we’re in a small municipality, you know your neighbours, everyone knows everything about everyone, and the electoral officers are our neighbours, brothers- or sisters-in-law, father, mother … in short, everyone knows who will vote and who won’t,” he said.

However, he noted that some small towns have low turnout as well — possibly due to the high number of part-time residents with primary homes in other cities.

Of Quebec’s five biggest cities, only Quebec City managed to surpass a 50 per cent turnout rate.

On the other hand, residents of many Quebec small towns didn’t get a chance to vote at all. Just over half of municipal candidates in the province ran unopposed, and more than 4,500 candidates, including 564 mayors, were elected via acclamation.

Bernier, the outgoing Lac-Édouard mayor, said the job has become increasingly complex, expanding from simple service delivery to include tourism and economic and social development. All that, he said, for a salary that is often around $10,000 or $12,000 a year, which he says would have worked out to about $3 an hour in his case. Bernier chose instead to decline the “ridiculous” salary.

In the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean town of Desbiens, the city’s president of elections credits the candidates themselves for a “historic” voter turnout of 72.38 per cent.

“They did a lot of door-to-door canvassing during election days. They made phone calls to encourage people to vote,” Isabelle Leduc said in an interview. “They really did a great job campaigning and were very present in the field, compared to other years or other towns.”

She also credits a strong get-out-the-vote effort from the town, a population desiring change, and the implementation for the first time of mobile voting, which may have boosted participation from residents of a seniors home.

Like some of the other towns, she said Desbiens also benefited from having a number of competitive races, after previous elections failed to draw more than one candidate for most posts.

“I believe this was historic,” she said. “We’re celebrating our 100 years next year, and these will have been historic elections.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2025.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press