OTTAWA — Elections Canada says the turnout of young voters in last October's election was up sharply from 2011.
The agency says voter participation among those aged 18 to 24 rose by 18.3 percentage points to 57.1 per cent, up from 38.8 per cent in 2011.
That's the biggest jump for that age group since the agency began tracking demographic data in 2004.
Among those eligible to vote for the first time, the percentage was 58.3 per cent.
The official turnout rate overall was 68.3 per cent, with voters age 65 to 74 recording a 78.8 per cent participation rate.
Voter participation on aboriginal reserves was also up, with 61.5 per cent of registered voters casting ballots, up 14 points from 2011, the agency says.
Elections Canada said Statistics Canada surveyed people after the October election, asking those who did not vote why they stayed away from the polls.
Almost a third said they were not interested in politics, while nearly a quarter said they were too busy to bother.
Elections Canada conducted a youth survey after the October vote and reported that while young people are generally satisfied with the way democracy works in Canada, more than a quarter of those surveyed are somewhat or very dissatisfied.
Dissatisfaction was highest among aboriginal youth (37 per cent) and youth with a disability (35 per cent).
When asked in the survey to agree or disagree with a series of statements about politics and voting, youth and older adults generally demonstrated similar attitudes, although the young were less likely to feel their votes made a difference.
Youth were also more likely to say politics and government are too complicated.
Young people were less likely than older adults to feel that by voting they could make a difference and more likely to feel that politics and government seem too complicated.
The results also suggested different degrees of interest in politics between young and old.
Those over 35 expressed more interest and were far more likely to see voting as a duty, not a choice.
Young voters were about evenly split on the duty-choice question.
While the results suggested that young people were less likely to have been contacted by a political party or candidate, they did report a level of engagement in politics.
They are most likely to report they searched online for information about politics.
And 40 per cent of youth, but just 29 per cent of older adults, used social media to share political information. That figure rose to 54 per cent among aboriginal youth and 51 per cent among youth with a disability.
Youth and older adults indicated that they used different sources to get information about the election.
The youth were most likely to use a media website or other web source (23 per cent), followed by television (20 per cent) and social networking sites (19 per cent).
Older adults were most likely to rely on television (37 per cent), followed by media websites (19 per cent) and newspapers (16 per cent).
