How has gentrification impacted politics in Toronto?

[King of Kensington]

Paging @adma

 

[christiesplits]

Whoops, meant to say Bernie for Dufferin Grove, for the same reasons you mentioned.

 

[King of Kensington]

"Hipster" or "mature professional"? Bernie or Hillary '16?

Annex
Beaches
Dufferin Grove
The Junction
Leslieville
Little Portugal
Riverdale
Roncesvalles

More young adults, more renters, more transit use = more left (generally).

Age 20-35

Little Portugal 40.3%
Annex 34%
Dufferin Grove 32.8%
Junction 24.6%
Roncesvalles 24.4%
South Riverdale 24.2%
North Riverdale 18.1%
Beaches 16.2%

Renters

Annex 62%
Dufferin Grove 59.4%
Roncesvalles 56.5%
Little Portugal 55.8%
North Riverdale 44%
Junction 40.7%
South Riverdale 40.1%
Beaches 37.6%

Public Transit to Work

Dufferin Grove 47.8%
Junction 44%
Annex 41.7%
North Riverdale 39.7%
Roncesvalles 38.8%
South Riverdale 38.6%
Little Portugal 38.5%
Beaches 29.4%

 

[adma]

When it comes to gentrification, keep in mind that as with municipal politics and the last provincial election, apparent Lib-default left-support can be *quite* conditional. And especially these days, income levels don't necessarily correlate with what one opts to buy into--it's a reason why those who try to pot-kettle-black Doug Ford when he bashes "elites" are off track. It's not that he's rich, it's the *kind* of rich he represents--in fact, as Toronto gentrifies, it gets *less* Ford-y, not more.

And it's a reason why even as income levels rise, it becomes less and less likely over time that a downtown ward will elect a non-left councillor. Or at least, about as "non-left" as they'll commit to is Mayor Tory or some McMahon/Bradford type. The days of Beavises and Lamports are long gone.

(And even when it comes to historical federal strength, the NDP is overrated--even when Toronto was more of a "blue-collar" town, the party had certain ceilings and had to prevail in split-vote circumstances, because the hard-wired default for most voters was Lib vs Tory. In fact, Nash/Cash/Scott lost with shares that once would have been enough to win with; it's just that the Libs united a vote that, pre-90s, might have split with the Tories, back when Red Toryism was still a valid notion.)

 

[King of Kensington]

Don't see Parkdale-High Park and Davenport going back to the pre-Layton 18%-ish range for NDP support any time soon, even with all those "rich hipsters at the Gladstone."

 

[King of Kensington]

Then there was all those ONDP '18/Tory '18 voters in Danforth. Outside the Spadina to Roncesvalles "municipal left" stronghold.

 

[adma]

Don't see Parkdale-High Park and Davenport going back to the pre-Layton 18%-ish range for NDP support any time soon, even with all those "rich hipsters at the Gladstone."

Unless Jagmeet Singh *really* bombs as leader. (And then, that'd be 18% as an improvement over 1993's 9%.)

 

[thettctransitfanatic]

Don't see Parkdale-High Park and Davenport going back to the pre-Layton 18%-ish range for NDP support any time soon, even with all those "rich hipsters at the Gladstone."

That area is NDP. I lived in until this month, I know how it is.

 

[christiesplits]

Unless Jagmeet Singh *really* bombs as leader. (And then, that'd be 18% as an improvement over 1993's 9%.)

Nash was a surprise win in 2006 in Parkdale-High Park, so it's not unthinkable that Saron Gebresellassi, who gained some attention last municipal election, could eek out a win. I wouldn't discount the Toronto-Danforth NDP machine either.

 

[King of Kensington]

Andrew Cash is a great fit for Davenport.

 

[adma]

Nash was a surprise win in 2006 in Parkdale-High Park, so it's not unthinkable that Saron Gebresellassi, who gained some attention last municipal election, could eek out a win. I wouldn't discount the Toronto-Danforth NDP machine either.

The curious thing about Parkdale-High Park is that before the Audrey collapse of 1993, it was never really on prime federal (as opposed to provincial) NDP radar--they were a pretty consistent third-party force vs the Polish Liberal machine of Stan Haidasz and Jesse Flis, and to a lesser degree the Ukrainian Conservative machine of Yuri Shymko and Andrew Witer. But then the collapse of the PCs and split in the right combined with a robust municipal machine (among other things, 1993's losing federal candidate David Miller had by then been elected to Metro office) led them to seize the opportunity once fortunes started to recover under Alexa; so in both 1997 and 2000, they scored second-place bragging rights, and that served as the foundation for their aggressive Layton-era ascent under Peggy Nash as the Libs' nominal opposition in PHP. (Changing demographics helped, i.e. the eclipse of the old Eastern European political dominance--the last remnant of which was Chris Korwin-Kuczynski municipally.)

 

[King of Kensington]

Saron's political coalition was interesting: her vote largely tailed the progressive middle class vote that Jennifer Keesmaat got, but she also did very in certain public housing areas as well. Many of her best polls have (not surprisingly) sizeable Ethiopian/Eritrean populations (i.e. St. James Town, Pelham Park, parts of Parkdale, Jane-Woolner, Teesdale).

 

[christiesplits]

A few observations since the recent provincial election and last fall’s federal election:

- Davenport can officially take the crown for the “orange-ist” Toronto riding. The ONDP won Davenport with the highest margin in the city in the recent provincial election, and the federal NDP had its strongest Toronto showing in the riding last fall, losing by less than a 100 votes.

- Scarborough Guildwood is probably the “reddest” Toronto riding in that it has never had a non-Liberal MP in Ottawa and had the OLP’s largest margin of victory in Toronto in the last provincial election.

- I’m unsure what would be the “bluest” riding in Toronto, but you could make the case that it’s York Centre, which is held by the PCPO and had the CPC’s strongest showing in the fall federal election.