2023 Toronto Mayoral by-election

[allengeorge]

I feel sorry for Matlow - I thought he ran a substantive and principled campaign. Unfortunately, I think he lost a good portion of his vote to the “Anyone but Bailao/Saunders” wave.

I wonder how different the outcome would have looked with ranked ballots. I suspect Matlow would have placed higher, and that Bailao would have ended up mayor (I’m assuming a portion of Saunders’ supporters would have picked Bailao as second or third choice)

 

[christiesplits]

A few thoughts on last night:

- Solid win for Chow, and as many expected, a tighter race to the finish line following Tory's endorsement of Bailao. Congrats to Mainstreet Research which predicted Bailao's surge.

- Chow over-performed in Scarborough, especially in Scarborough Centre and Scarborough Guildwood. While there is a lot of discussion about her Chinese ancestry helping her in Scarborough, parts of Scarborough have historically swung "orange" when the political stars align. Wards like Scarborough Centre, Guildwood, Southwest and North have large South Asian communities, and I'd be curious to know what types of outreach occurred in these communities.

- I thought Chow under-performed in York South Weston, which traditionally has pockets of working class/NDP-ish voters. Barbara Hall and David Miller won the area in previous mayoral election cycles. I know the ward has a large Portuguese community, which may have helped Bailao.

- While it's more than 3 years away, I expect there to be chatter soon about 2026 candidates to take on Chow. Names that come to mind include Ana Bailao (obviously), Jennifer McKelvie, Stan Cho and *gasp* Michael Ford. 2026 is certain to be a less crowded race than 2023, with the real possibility of the centre/right wing coalescing around a candidate a la Ken Sim in Vancouver or Mark Sutcliffe in Ottawa to take on the left.

 

[Towered]

I'm also a bit surprised that Chow beat Bailão by almost 20% in Davenport (50% to 30%) - where Bailão got about 84% of the vote in the 2018 election!

I was stunned by that too, considering how heavily Portuguese Davenport is.

 

[toaster29]

In York-South Weston, Nunziata endorsed Bailao so that might have helped her there. In Davenport, Bailao getting over 30% I think is surprising, given how far left this part of the city is - her history there is probably why but I don't think anyone expected that her number would be that high there. For Scarborough, I do think the fact that Olivia Chow is of East-Asian background helps her here (same with Willowdale), in a way that any other left/progressive candidate might not get, not sure if this is indicative of Scarborough becoming more progressive or the cultural vote coming out (remember Myers had a unique win, while most of the rest of Scarb did not elect progressives last year). As for Etobicoke being "so Conservative", Bailao was the "Liberal" candidate, not the conservative candidate, so I don't know if that discussion tracks, but they are definitely not not as "left-leaning" as Scarborough appears to have been this time around, but I do think Morley might be a 1-term councillor given the Etobicoke-Lakeshore results. There was no "Liberal" candidate last time there (Grimes was the Centre/Right vs Morley, so if there was a centrist option, E-L might have gone for it).

 

[Towered]

I feel sorry for Matlow - I thought he ran a substantive and principled campaign. Unfortunately, I think he lost a good portion of his vote to the “Anyone but Bailao/Saunders” wave.

I feel bad for him too. His campaign platform was technically by far the best, and by what I could see he never stooped to mudslinging or vapid, trollish hyperbole like Saunders or Bradford. He was my pick and he deserved a far better result than the measly sub-5% that he got, which was notably worse than his polling numbers. For some reason he didn't connect. Hopefully he'll get a high profile position under Chow.

 

[picard102]

Did she win with the least votes of any Mayor since amalgamation?

 

[innsertnamehere]

I feel bad for him too. His campaign platform was technically by far the best, and by what I could see he never stooped to mudslinging or vapid, trollish hyperbole like Saunders or Bradford. He was my pick and he deserved a far better result than the measly sub-5% that he got, which was notably worse than his polling numbers. For some reason he didn't connect. Hopefully he'll get a high profile position under Chow.

Matlow has a terrible reputation for being famously challenging to work with. I'm happy he lost, even if he presented a strong platform from a policy perspective.

 

[Towered]

Is @Towered doing that well? If so, I should have buttered him up more.... LOL

I mean a couple hundred mil burning a hole in his pocket and he lives in Holyday's Ward? LOL

I'd throw dem bills as a down payment on a Kipling LRT immediately!

 

[zang]

Did she win with the least votes of any Mayor since amalgamation?

Google it.

 

[SubHuman]

Walking past a polling location at approximately 7:55 pm (as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had already voted at an advanced poll) and seeing a guy storming out yelling about not being allowed to vote -- I would assume showing up a few minutes before polls close with no valid identification and thinking they might have to let you vote anyway, is apparently a scheme that doesn't work. The guy looked more than old enough to have voted in many elctions, and it made me wonder if he was maybe some badly deluded non-Toronto resident eager to dishonestly attempt to cast his ballot.

 

[zang]

I was stunned by that too, considering how heavily Portuguese Davenport is.

I have a friend in the area; he says she's not widely respected or liked amongst those in his neighbourhood.

 

[smably]

I have a friend in the area; he says she's not widely respected or liked amongst those in his neighbourhood.

Anecdotally, the level of service I've gotten as a constituent from Bravo's office has been a vast improvement. Among my Wallace Emerson neighbours, I get the sense that most people thought she was competent but not particularly distinguished. I swore I'd never vote for her again after she voted against police reforms in 2020 and I suspect that a lot of people in Davenport were getting tired of her closeness with Tory.

 

[LemonCondo]

I need to break my habit of looking at the comments under CBC videos and articles. You know for hating the CBC so much conservatives sure love to comment on it.

 

[zang]

Anecdotally, the level of service I've gotten as a constituent from Bravo's office has been a vast improvement. Among my Wallace Emerson neighbours, I get the sense that most people thought she was competent but not particularly distinguished. I swore I'd never vote for her again after she voted against police reforms in 2020 and I suspect that a lot of people in Davenport were getting tired of her closeness with Tory.

Yeah, I'm hearing the same about Bravo.

As my friend said about Bailão: "To know, know, know her… is to not be impressed with her." It seems she's kinda seen as a relic there these days.

 

[zang]

I need to break my habit of looking at the comments under CBC videos and articles. You know for hating the CBC so much conservatives sure love to comment on it.

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It kills me that conservatives don't even have a clue as to what "15 minute cities" actually means. They just want to rail against it because it's seen as "progressive".