Toronto’s ‘Unusual’ Mayoral Election Is ‘Wide Open’
Toronto officially opened mayoral candidate nominations on April 3, and the crowded race is underway.
“It’s a most interesting race because it’s quite open, and that’s very unusual,” Nelson Wiseman, political science professor at the University of Toronto, told The Epoch Times. The 77-year-old has lived in Toronto a long time and “it’s not in my lifetime that I remember” an election that’s so open, he said.
Incumbents usually take a large portion of the votes, but without an incumbent in this race it’s a more level playing field.
“The vote will be very fragmented. You could have four or five people who are each getting around 20 percent of the vote,” Wiseman said. Someone could end up winning with only 25 percent of the vote.
John Tory stepped down in February over revelations he had an affair with a former staffer. He had been reelected in October 2022 with about 340,000 votes. The runner-up had 100,000 votes, and the other 29 candidates each had 35,000 or less.
A byelection is set for June 26, with advance voting from June 8 to 13. Candidate nominations close May 12, with 13 candidates having already announced publicly that they are running. Two others have said they’re “considering” a run.
Wiseman expects voter turnout to be higher than it was in October because the election is so open. The sole focus will also be on the mayor, since it’s not like a regular election where city councillors are also on the ballot.
Incumbents in the Toronto mayoral race have historically had about a 90 percent chance of winning, according to research published in 2019 by political scientist Jack Lucas at the University of Calgary. Incumbent candidates in Toronto were re-elected 93 percent of the time between 2003 and 2014, when Tory first won.
Generally, in big cities across Ontario, success rates for incumbents have been between 80 and 90 percent, Lucas said.
Without an incumbent, the voting dynamic will be different, Wiseman said.
Usually the media narrows down the pool of candidates to two or three, including the incumbent. This time, the focus is likely to narrow to four or five, some of whom will cut into each other’s votes.
The high-profile candidates likely to get the most attention, Wiseman said, are former police chief Mark Saunders, City Councillor Ana Bailão, City Councillor Brad Bradford, and Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter (who has resigned to run for mayor).
If Olivia Chow, who has said she’s “considering” a run, puts her hat in the ring, she would cut into Bailão’s voter base, Wiseman said. Chow is a former city councillor, NDP MP, and was a mayoral candidate in 2014. Saunders and Bradford will similarly be in competition for the same segment of voters, Wiseman said.
Others running for mayor include City Councillor Josh Matlow and former city councillors Rob Davis and Giorgio Mammoliti. City Councillor Steven Holyday has said he is “considering” a run.
Urbanist Gil Peñalosa, who came in second last time, is running again. Policy analyst Chloe Brown, who came in third, and retired police officer Blake Acton, who was fourth, are also running.
Journalist Anthony Furey and activist Chris ‘Sky’ Saccocia are in the race. And former Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes is the most recent to announce her candidacy.
