Beausejour riding fifth busiest for advance polls across the country

A13

By SHAWN BERRY
Canadaeast News Service

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Across New Brunswick, 49,684 voters turned out for advance polls for Tuesday's federal election. That's 8.4 per cent of the 589,049 New Brunswickers eligible to vote.

"As a reflection of what is going to happen on Tuesday, it's probably irrelevant," said Don Desserud, a political scientist from the University of New Brunswick in Saint John.

He noted that many of those who voted in advance did so before the campaign got really interesting in the last week.

"People who voted early may have thought this election was a done deal," he said.

Early votes were held Oct. 2, and 3 and on this past Monday, the day before the Conservatives released their party platform.

Desserud was interested in the massive turnouts in the Liberal-held ridings of Madawaska-Restigouche and Beausejour.

Madawaska-Restigouche -- which the Conservatives consider up for grabs from the Liberals -- had 11.2 per cent of voters cast ballots for advanced polling, the second highest turnout in the country.

That's up considerably from the 8.7 per cent who voted in early polls in 2006.

Advanced polling was also high in Beausejour with 11 per cent of voters turning out early. That made it the fifth busiest riding in the country. Turnout was just one per cent higher than in 2006.

Early turnout in Fundy Royal was 7.9 per cent while turnout in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe was 8.4 per cent.

Early voters in the Fredericton riding represented 8.7 per cent of eligible voters compared to 7.9 per cent who went to advanced polls in the winter election of 2006.

Turnout at the advance polls was lowest in Saint John where just 4.4 per cent of voters cast their ballots early.

That's down from 7.6 per cent of voters in 2006.

The early turnout for Tobique-Mactaquac and Miramichi was 8 per cent.

Turnout in New Brunswick Southwest was 6.9 per cent while turnout in Acadie-Bathurst was 9.2 per cent.

A total of 1,459,253 Canadians cast ballots at the advance polls. That's a decrease from more than 1.5 million in 2006 and 1.2 million in 2004.