2023 Toronto Mayoral by-election

[turini2]

Chloe Brown did well again - beating two city councillors, including Bradford!

I wonder if Hunter regrets resigning to run...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1673494338959974401

 

[zang]

But this time, Mammoliti finished 10th with only 258 votes, and 1.5%. I think that's the last we see from Mammoliti.

The man is an opportunist and a grifter. We’ll keep seeing him pulling stuff like this until the day he dies.

I’m surprised he and his son haven’t yet joined Chris Sky in his chorus of “this election was rigged!”

 

[adma]

When did Etobicoke become so conservative? Is it all the Ford effect?

Municipally speaking, it always was. Remember that Doug Holyday was its last pre-amalgamation mayor, and before him were snoozers like Bruce Sinclair & Dennis Flynn. It's the kind of place where Orange County-style "tax revolts" were likeliest to happen. It's a place where old crabs like Gordon Sinclair & Harold Ballard tended to hunker down, and in Ballard's wake a bunch of nouveau riche jocks w/the same kind of palooka-meathead or don't-tread-on-me values (I guess the Fords w/their football fixations count in that light--but even, at the higher end, St. George's as a magnet for *serious* golf-heads, including your proverbial off-season Maple Leafs). Sure, there were Dryden-esque jock-philosopher exceptions to the rule (and *that* tendency plays out in its present federal good-mannered Lib-moderate inclination); but on the whole it was the meanest, nastiest, most miserable of the boroughs, and past NDP tendencies in its N & S ends were hollowed out by de-industrialization and Ford/Grimes-esque right-populism (and, midway, Lib-variety "uniting the left").

 

[Jonny5]

Was thinking about the discussions here earlier about Ana Bailao's name and CBC sure took it in a new direction this morning.
Is that the Pound sterling symbol wedged in there?

 

[Admiral Beez]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1673500592449150977

The vote spreads, via The Local magazine:

View attachment 488076

First racialized mayor? What about Lastman?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

First racialized mayor? What about Lastman?

Lastman isn’t visible minority.

AoD

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The man is an opportunist and a grifter. We’ll keep seeing him pulling stuff like this until the day he dies.

I’m surprised he and his son haven’t yet joined Chris Sky in his chorus of “this election was rigged!”

Grifters can’t share the pot of gullibles with each other.

AoD

 

[adma]

Looking back since amalgamation, it looks like it. Though it's similar, but slightly closer, to the 2003 election when David Miller beat John Tory by 5.2% and 36,000 votes.

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!

Also, looking at Peruzza's ward (Ward 7, Humber - Black Creek); it's also Mammoliti's ward. And in 2018 Peruzza beat Mammoliti 37% to 25%. But this time, Mammoliti finished 10th with only 258 votes, and 1.5%. I think that's the last we see from Mammoliti.

Meanwhile in Matlow's ward (Toronto-St. Pauls), where he got 85% as councillor in 2022; this time he got 19.3%, finishing 3rd.

Re "slightly closer": in a strict 2-way contest, Chow got 53.39% vs Bailao. Miller got 53.22% vs Tory. So one might argue that according to *that* barometer, she actually did a hair *better*. (And not only that, but Lastman got 52.82% vs Hall in a 2-way in '97. Tory vs Ford in '14: 54.42%.)

Bailao might have gotten 84% in Davenport in '18; but that's for the absence of an NDP opponent of any value. So it was the equivalent of an otherwise-potentially-competitive US congressional contest where a Dem or GOP candidate faces only Libertarian or some-such-fringe opposition. And given how it's been the most progressive ward in Toronto for several elections running (Bailao's ward was one of 2 that went Chow in '14, and it was the closest reach for Keesmaat in '18 and Penalosa in '21 as well), for it to be her *best* ward in the inner-city "Chow belt" is reflective enough of the clout that being the ward's former representative can bring. (And the only other Chow wards where Bailao did better were the borderline inner-city St Paul's as well as Willowdale and Scarboroughs SW & Centre--and only Willowdale saw her higher than *31%*.)

And as for Mammo--well, of all the sub-Perruzza candidates, that was the best showing in any ward, and the only other above-a-percentage-point finishes were 1.1% and 1.2% for Gong in Scarb-Ag & Scarb N.

And as for Matlow: his municipal council success has to be understood in "one-party-race" terms a la Bailao in '18 (though in his case a bit more "organically" so). And he still got the best result in any ward for anyone not Chow or Bailao. (Mitzie got 13.1% in *her* home turf--she, and Chloe Brown in Davenport, was the only non-Saunders/Matlow 3rd place, though Perruzza got bizarrely close in his ward.)

Saunders got 10.2% in DVW (where he ran provincially last year); Etobicoke N & C were the only wards where Saunders got over 12% (15.4% and 13.6% respectively); Etobicoke C & LS were the only ones where Furey got over 7% (8.3% and 7.1% respectively).

 

[adma]

Lastman isn’t visible minority.

AoD

By that barometer, Nathan Phillips was Toronto's first racialized mayor.

 

[adma]

And actually, one other thing to keep in mind is that going by the scale of margin and the progress of the results over the evening, I wouldn't be surprised if Ana was already a clear 2nd in the advance polling--that is, before the Tory endorsement and everything; IOW all those Mainstreet polls might have been more on the mark than those which showed her among the lower-teens-and-worse sub-2nd scrum...

 

[adma]

And another thing when it comes to Furey: he's probably the reason why Chris Sky did 1/3 as well as Faith Goldy did in '18.

 

[Fresco]

Lastman isn’t visible minority.

AoD

But he was a minority by definition

 

[Fresco]

Final results (top 15)

 

[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.