In the village of Lac-Poulin, in Chaudière-Appalaches, there are only 16 electors who did not exercise their right to vote in the last municipal election. So more than 92% of the eligible population chose the new mayor, a trend that mirrors that of other small municipalities in the province, because on the other side of the spectrum, citizens of large cities have shunned the ballot box. .
“There is a certain social pressure to carry out one’s duty in a small village,” explains Julie Caron-Malenfant, who is executive director of the Institut du Nouveau Monde and who sits on the Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression. “People watch the comings and goings of their neighbors, while in town, they are lost in the crowd, they feel they don’t have the power to change things. “
Among the five largest cities of the province, only Quebec exceeded the national average of participation (38.5%): 45.2% of the people registered on the electoral list went to the polls.
In Montreal, 38.3% of the 1.1 million voters voted. In Gatineau, just over a third of citizens have exercised their right, or 35.1%. Even in Longueuil, which was the scene of a thrilling four-way race, only 34.1% of eligible citizens mobilized.
It is in Laval, however, that the rate is lowest, at a low 28.8%.
Explore in the following tables the Quebec municipalities that voted the most – and the least – in the municipal elections of 2021.
Slight drop across Quebec
Another surprise of these elections is the overall province-wide turnout, which fell to 38.5%, according to data viewed as this line was written, when results were available for 473 municipalities. out of the 477s where a race for mayor took place.
However, from 2005, the year of the first simultaneous general election in Quebec, to 2017, the rate has always been above 44%. We therefore observe a drop of around five percentage points in citizen participation.
“People do not make the link between voting and their quality of life,” deplores Julie Caron-Malenfant. However, if there is one level of government that changes people’s lives, it is the municipal government. “
Its responsibilities include land use planning, social housing, parks, recreation, but also public transit and road maintenance.
Mme Caron-Malenfant also justifies this decrease in citizen participation by a loss of confidence in the ability of governments to solve problems that have real repercussions in our lives. The pandemic would also have reduced mobilization due to the impossibility of taking action.
“We see a weariness and an indifference that result from the inertia that has settled in our lives for two years. People tell themselves that we don’t decide anything anyway, politicians make decisions for us. It can influence our perception of the capacity to change things, ”says the researcher.
The solution to get out of this passive state is to reconnect with her community, she recalls, since it is the feeling of belonging that has the greatest effect on the decision to appear at the polling station. on the day of the vote.
“We are in a society that is more and more fragmented, fragmented, people are isolated. They form communities that have nothing to do with the territory in which they reside, which leads them to ignore their neighbors. This brings us back to a society of user-payers rather than citizens who care about each other to form a whole that is going to be better than the sum of its parts. “