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Unofficial results show record voter turnout in Cariboo-Prince George

All polls have been reported in Cariboo-Prince George; still a handful left to be counted in Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies
Colin Slark
Colin Slark
pgc-federal-election-2025-3(1)
Incumbent Conservative MP Todd Doherty and his four-year-old granddaughter Ren walk into his re-election celebration at the Courtyard by Marriott Monday, April 28, 2025.

Elections Canada’s unofficial results for Cariboo-Prince George show that a record number and percentage of eligible voters in the April 28 federal election turned out to send Conservative incumbent Todd Doherty back to Parliament for his fourth straight term in the House of Commons.

With all 266 polls reporting, preliminary results show that 63,322 of the 92,834 registered voters in the riding cast ballots on or before election day.

That beat out the previous high of 55,095 votes cast in the 2019 federal election.

That’s the most votes cast in Cariboo-Prince George since the riding was created out of the former ridings of Cariboo-Chilcotin and Prince George-Bulkley Valley in 2004.

However, the riding did expand in size to include areas like 100 Mile House in the last federal district redistribution, though Prince George’s downtown core swapped over to Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies.

That vote total represented 68.21 per cent of people who had registered to vote ahead of election day, also a record dating back to the riding’s creation.

The voter turnouts ranked from highest to lowest percentage since 2004 are:

  1. 2025: 68.21 per cent
  2. 2015: 67.85 per cent
  3. 2019: 65.5 per cent
  4. 2006: 60 per cent
  5. 2021: 59.8 per cent
  6. 2011: 58 per cent
  7. 2004: 57.43 per cent
  8. 2008: 54.32 per cent

The unofficial vote totals and vote share for each candidate are as follows:

  1. Todd Doherty (Conservative): 38,039 votes, 60.1 per cent vote share
  2. Clinton Emslie (Liberal): 19,206 votes, 30.3 per cent vote share
  3. Angie Bonazzo (NDP): 4,056 votes, 6.4 per cent vote share
  4. Jodie Capling (Green): 1,192 votes, 1.9 per cent vote share
  5. Rudy Sans (PPC): 436 votes, 0.7 per cent vote share
  6. Kenneth B. Thomson: 213 votes, 0.3 per cent vote share
  7. Jake Wiens (Christian Heritage): 180 votes, 0.3 per cent vote share

While still a distant second place, Emslie received more than double the votes than the last Liberal candidate, Garth Frizzell, earned in the 2021 election.

Frizzell received 8,397 in a third-place showing, representing 16.6 per cent of votes cast in Cariboo-Prince George in 2021.

However, the results for the NDP in Cariboo-Prince George saw a collapse much like the party saw across the country.

Bonazzo’s 4,056 votes were less than half of the 10,323 that NDP candidate Audrey McKinnon earned in 2021 in a second-place finish. That earned McKinnon 20.4 per cent of the vote, compared to the 6.4 per cent Bonazzo obtained.

The People’s Party of Canada saw their vote share decline from the 8.2 per cent they earned in the 2021 election to just 0.7 per cent this time around.

The Greens’ vote share declined from 3.6 per cent in 2021 to 1.9 per cent this time around, though they managed to move up from fifth place in the riding to fourth place.

The Christian Heritage Party saw their results only slightly decline from the 0.4 per cent they earned in 2021 to 0.3 per cent this time around.

When this article was first published, Elections Canada was still waiting on results to come in from 14 of the 272 polls in Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, where Bob Zimmer was leading with 70.9 per cent of votes cast.

With 95 per cent of polls reporting in, voter turnout was pegged at 59.26 per cent. If that holds, it would represent the lowest turnout there since 2011.