Polls across Vancouver's 85 designated voting locations are open from 8 a.m. through 8 p.m., with residents free to choose whichever site suits them. Advance ballots cast ahead of election day climbed to 103,000 — a total that outpaced the roughly 65,000 recorded across five advance-voting days in 2022 by around 60 per cent.

Among the outcomes the ballot will settle is the question of who leads the city across the coming four-year term. Eight candidates are vying for the mayor's seat: Ken Sim, the sitting mayor running under the ABC Vancouver banner, alongside Pete Fry of the Green Party, Kareem Allam representing the Vancouver Liberals, Colleen Hardwick of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, Rebecca Bligh under the Vote Vancouver label, Muhammad Ahmad of Bright Future Vancouver, and two independents — Amauri Caliman and Scott Gilbert.

On the same ballot, ten City Council positions draw candidates from ABC, the Greens, COPE, OneCity, and a range of other parties, while seven Park Board commissioner posts and nine Vancouver School Board trustee seats round out the races put before voters. Voters will also find five measures on the ballot — a pair of plebiscite questions addressing public safety alongside three separate borrowing proposals tied to the Capital Plan.

Sim, pointing to areas where his performance fell short of expectations, put forward the view that his leadership of the city still holds promise going forward. A property tax freeze — holding increases at zero per cent — forms one plank of his campaign platform. He also put forward an outline of a second-term agenda covering the opening hundred days, contingent on winning the election.

Allam, who previously served as Sim's chief of staff, has put forward a platform centred on drawing younger residents back to Vancouver through expanded job opportunities, more attainable housing, and greater investment in parks and community facilities. He described his agenda as drawing support from across the political spectrum rather than aligning with any single viewpoint. The two men's working relationship appears to have cooled, with Allam putting distance between himself and Sim.

Bligh, holding a two-term council record, backed Sim's 2022 ABC Vancouver campaign before shifting her affiliation to Vote Vancouver. Her campaign pitch centres on residents she describes as an overlooked middle tier of Vancouver's population, with a platform she frames as centrist despite positioning herself on the progressive side of the political spectrum. She has advanced the position that Sim's property tax freeze directs its benefits disproportionately toward owners of high-value land while reducing the revenue available for public services. Her platform includes partnering with the federal government to unlock city-owned land and extend no-cost transit access to young riders.

Hardwick, who previously held a council seat, has put forward the view that thoughtful urban planning forms the foundation of a livable Vancouver. Her platform includes scrapping the city's official development plan and restoring locally based planning offices to individual neighbourhoods.

Polling data gathered by Canada Pulse Insights and released on October 9 put Fry ahead of Sim by a single percentage point among voters who had settled on a choice, pointing to a mayoral contest with no clear front-runner. Conducted on behalf of a prominent news channel and OMNI TV, the survey places Fry at 28 per cent against Sim's 27 per cent — a gap that falls within the sampling margin of error, which stands at plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. Polling numbers place Allam in the third position, with support measured at 19 per cent.

Restricted to decided voters who have either cast a ballot already or pledged to do so, Fry holds a one-point edge over Sim — 29 per cent against 28 per cent. Among decided voters, Hardwick holds a 13 per cent share, with Bligh trailing at seven per cent.

Each of the five candidates seeking the mayor's office has put forward a platform touching on day-to-day concerns for residents, with housing costs and neighbourhood safety featuring prominently across all of them. Wright, who leads Canada Pulse Insights, described two voter coalitions pulling in opposite directions: those drawn to Pete Fry's platform — centred on environmental responsibility, ethical governance, accountability, and housing affordability — and those backing Ken Sim, whose supporters tend to prioritise affordability alongside crime reduction, municipal tax levels, and fiscal accountability, issues Wright characterised as more practical and day-to-day in nature, and ones he suggested carry enough weight to drive higher turnout at the polls. Wright also stated that older residents tend to own property and pay taxes and therefore approach voting with greater seriousness, a characterisation he put forward as part of his analysis of voter behaviour.

The ballot put before voters also carries two plebiscite questions addressing public safety matters. The first concerns whether municipal bylaws ought to restrict open-air consumption of hard drugs in public spaces — behaviour that provincial law already addresses — while the second asks whether the city should formally request that the province convert portions of the former St. Paul's Hospital site into a secured treatment facility capable of housing more than 100 patients on an involuntary basis.

Hardwick dismissed the questions as little more than a tactic for gaining votes, while several other candidates pushed back, contending they would prove difficult to implement. Sim noted that revising the municipal health bylaw — a regulation that currently addresses conduct such as smoking in communal areas — would allow enforcement officers to levy fines or confiscate drugs without resorting to formal arrests. On the question of involuntary care, he argued that the province carries a duty to act on behalf of those whose behaviour places themselves or others at risk of harm. Fry, by contrast, favours an approach that steers people toward supervised consumption facilities or shelter options rather than allowing drug use to continue unaddressed in open public spaces.

Three borrowing questions tied to the Capital Plan also appear on the ballot. Three distinct areas form the backbone of the plan: how people and goods move through streets and corridors, the facilities that communities rely on for everyday civic functions, and the green or open-air spaces available to the public.

Ballots are being cast at polling locations throughout the province. Ballots cast in every B.C. municipality — Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, and Abbotsford among them — cover mayoral and council seats as well.