The people of Niagara-on-the-Lake have spoken — at least, 9,262 of them have.
The 2026 municipal election saw a slight uptick in voter turnout compared to the election four years ago, with around 52 per cent of registered voters casting their ballots this election season, according to unofficial results from the Town of NOTL’s website.
In this case, it means 9,262 out of 17,684 registered voters took part in the 2026 election.
That’s compared to 2022’s voter turnout of around 47 per cent — 7,644 out of 16,100 registered voters hit the polls to vote that year.
In the mayoral race, Vaughn Goettler received 5,101 votes, making up 55 per cent of votes cast for the next lord mayor. Four years ago, after his first attempt to become lord mayor, he came third in the three-candidate race, getting 1,268 votes.
His opponents, current councillor Erwin Wiens and current regional councillor Andrea Kaiser, received 2,870 votes and 1,287 votes, respectively. For Wiens, that’s 31 per cent of mayoral votes, and for Kaiser, almost 14 per cent.
As of Monday night, the Town of NOTL hadn’t shared a breakdown of the election results poll by poll. Five polling centres were open in town on election day, Oct. 26, in all five settlements: Old Town, Virgil, St. Davids, Glendale and Queenston. Collectively, the results came from 11 polling stations.
Before election day, two advance voting stations were open for voters to cast their ballots ahead of time, on Oct. 7 and Oct. 17. Internet advance voting was also available from Oct. 5 to Oct. 25.
The most votes for a single candidate were cast for Gary Burroughs, with 5,394 votes (generally, a councillor gets the most number of votes for a single candidate in NOTL’s elections). This makes him NOTL’s next deputy lord mayor — Wiens was the deputy lord mayor these past four years.
While this election’s voter turnout is higher than the last election’s, it’s not quite as high as the turnout from 2018, when 59 per cent of eligible voters casted their ballot (8,394 out of 14,213 eligible voters).
To view the election results, visit the Town of NOTL’s website, or the live results from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
