One of your new members of Parliament on the North Shore would be different if students had the official vote.
During Student Vote Canada 2025, held concurrently with the federal election Monday, more than 930,000 kids marked unofficial voting cards at elementary and high schools across the country.
Their choices were notably different, with kids electing a Conservative minority government with 165 seats and 36.4 per cent of the popular vote – compared to the adult result of a Liberal minority with 169 seats and 43.7 per cent of the popular vote. (The Conservatives got 144 seats and 41.3 per cent IRL.)
One of the student-elected seats that went to the Conservatives instead of the Liberals was Keith Roy in a tight race in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. Youngins elected Roy with 32.5 per cent (1,650) of the vote, compared to the Liberals’ Patrick Weiler with nearly 32 per cent of the vote (1,625).
In third place, the students chose Lauren Greenlaw of the Green party with 13.8 per cent of the vote, then the NDP’s Jäger Rosenberg with 10.6 per cent, the Rhinoceros Party’s Gordon Jeffrey with 8.2 per cent and Peyman Askari of the People’s Party with 2.9 per cent.
On the actual ballot, Weiler secured the riding handily with 59.8 per cent (38,361) of the votes, compared to Roy’s 32.9 per cent (21,124).
Greenlaw trailed with 3.4 per cent of the vote, Rosenberg with 3.2 per cent, Askari with 0.5 per cent and Jeffrey with 0.2 per cent.
In both the other North Shore ridings, the students matched the adult results by re-electing the Liberals.
The outcomes most closely matched in Burnaby North-Seymour, with Liberal Terry Beech receiving 52.9 per cent of the student vote and 59 per cent of the adult vote. Conservative Mauro Fancis got 24.8 per cent from students and 34 per cent from adults.
Younger people tend to 'vote with their hearts'
For kid electors across the country, the vote was much more spread out among candidates than concentrated on certain political parties. That’s because younger people tend to vote with their hearts rather than strategically, said Dana Cotnareanu, spokesperson for Student Vote.
“Even though the Conservatives have [the most] seats in the student vote, they didn’t get that much of the popular vote,” she said. “I feel like the students really voted for the parties that they wanted to see in power. And not necessarily voted against someone, they voted for someone.”
Cotnareanu said that conservative politics could be trending up among younger people, or other factors could be at play.
“In B.C., for example, a lot of the votes went to Green and NDP. It wasn’t … as Liberal as it might have been for the adults,” she said. “In this situation, obviously it might have been easier for the Conservative Party to slide into power, because the votes were more fragmented than they were for the adults.”
While this year’s student vote turnout was a little shy of a record 1.2 million ballots cast in 2019, it’s still impressive considering the shorter timeline to prepare for the snap election.
“Hats off to teachers for an incredible effort that they put in,” Cotnareanu said.
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