Next Mayor of Toronto?

[MetroMan]

Perhaps indicative of whats to come: a group of roughly 30 people from an NDP debate club that I frequent have all gone to vote for Smitherman today. Almost all of them were vowing to vote for Joe no matter what. Their motive was that they want to see Transit City go forward and at least Smitherman will do that.

If 50% of Pants support is soft and even if 20% moves to Smitherman, then we have ourselves Mayor George.

I expect the next poll to show Joe way down. Or maybe certain people polled can't bring themselves to verbalize their vote for
Smitherman but while in the booth they will reluctantly complete his arrow.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

And since that will never be the case, in reality we need more government subsidies in order to properly expand our system and attract more customers. Would you consider our current Sheppard nub to be a "silly-ass project"?

Btw, I notice a lot of Smitherman support in Riverdale, though I don't hold much stock in how signage correlates to actual voting.

>> Sorry, I disagree with the premise of your first sentence. I think more subsidy = more silly-ass projects. And, yes, I think the Sheppard stupidity had everything to do with a very popular suburban mayor rewarding his constituents. More money would have meant more subway in North York, and nary a dime to do the right things (DRL/Eglinton/complete the Scarborough loop/whatever). Mel spent 6000 years as our mayor, and 5999 were spent pretending he was still the mayor of North York. But, since he was nominally centre-right (not that I ever noticed), I'm supposed to bow to his fiscal restraint?
>> As for Smitherman in Riverdale -- I agree. Pants has received very little love from my Socialist hordes neighbors.

 

[W. K. Lis]

...If Hudak gets in next year there is a real chance that it will be scrapped even if Smitherman is mayor.

Unless he or his finance minister watches the price of oil as it goes up. Remember 2008, when people were clamoring for more and better public transit. The price of oil only went down because of the recession. Toronto was ahead of the game with Transit City, but could fall back with any anti-transit mayor or premier.

I watch this link for oil price news.

 

[Fac1]

>> Sorry, I disagree with the premise of your first sentence. I think more subsidy = more silly-ass projects.

And no subsidy = no expansion whatsoever = less ridership. I'd rather have a yearly subsidy, like we used to pre-Harris, and hope (it's unfortunate that we need to even do this) the money is spent on something useful than have nothing and know nothing will be improved. The notion of self-suffiency is nice, but the TTC isn't going to improve on ideals. Where would any major North American city's transit system be without these subsidies? Do you like the prospect of Hudak winning next year and eliminating the pittance we currently receive?

 

[MetroMan]

Yet another poll coming out tomorrow. This one by TorontoStar - CityTV. I can't imagine we'll see much of a change from the one released today, perhaps just confirmation that Joe is siphoning off just enough progressive support to let Ford get elected by a minority of Torontonians.

 

[Fac1]

A statistical tie is all one can expect, so long as it doesn't have Ford with a lead of 5-8% I'll be happy. If there is indeed a Pantalone implosion based on his soft support, we probably won't see that until next weekend's polls.

 

[MetroMan]

There's been no 3rd candidate who's gotten more than 10% in Toronto elections as far as I could find. The most was Barbara Hall in 2003 where she got 9% and John Tory and Miller fought for the top spot. Given the soft support for Pants demonstrated in the latest poll, I think I'm beginning to feel a little comfortable knowing that he'll lose at least 1/3 of his support (5%) to Smitherman which should put him over the top.

 

[Torontovibe]

Ford can be beaten. I just hope Pantalone supporters smarten up SOON!


Ford has narrow lead, but soft Pantalone support could tip scales toward Smitherman

KELLY GRANT — CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Globe and Mail Update
Published Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010 6:00PM EDT

Rob Ford has a slight edge in Toronto’s two-horse mayoral race with a week to go until election day, according to a new poll that also suggests support for third-place contender Joe Pantalone is stagnant and soft.

A Nanos Research poll for The Globe and Mail, CTV and CP24 conducted after Rocco Rossi quit last week found that 43.9 per cent of decided voters support Rob Ford, 40.5 per cent support George Smitherman and 15 per cent support Joe Pantalone.

 

[lafard]

Six hours later, we have another one, this one from the Star/CityTV. It kind of looks like they got scooped again on the polls - the caption for the article graphic is literallly "This is a caption fo rthe[sic] graphic" indicating this thing was dashed off in a hurry.

http://www.thestar.com/news/toronto...menon-faltering-in-final-days-poll-finds?bn=1

Ford 41
Smitherman 40
Pants 16.
Undecided 20.

1001 surveyed on Thursday and Friday, MOE 3.1, 19/20.

(Ford 33, Smitherman 32, pants 13, undec 20)

Edit: and a related article
http://www.thestar.com/news/torontomayoralrace/article/876833
Downtown over 'dalliance' with Ford

Though they're stretching it there, the margins of error on the subsamples would be bigger than their claimed swings.

Still, you might want to take a tylenol in advance if you're brave enough to wallow into the comments section tomorrow.

 

[nfitz]

Scooped again! And the polling was only Thursday/Friday rather than Thursday/Saturday. They need to hire a better pollster!

Big survey though. And very similar result. Add the two results together, and it's getting pretty accurate.

Given how soft Pantalone's support is, and how much more likely to vote Smitherman's support is, it's clearly going to be a Smitherman win.

I reckon it will be about 48 to 40, with 10 for Pantalone.

 

[MetroMan]

I don't know about "clearly" but I'm a lot more comfortable with these polls than I was when Joe and Smitherman were getting closer together in numbers, which would have resulted in an authentic vote split.

There are 3 factors to consider:

1 - Which way will the undecided go?
2 - Will enough Pants supporters abandon him in favour or Smitherman?
3 - Who will have the best get-out-the-vote organization?

The top 2 seem to favour Smitherman but #3 appears to go to Ford with his phone in town hall technology. His campaign has access to the numbers of the people who said they would vote for him. They fully intend to call those people to make sure they go out and vote on election day. Le'ts also not discount the fact that Ford has been at the top of every poll except one. Despite the margin of error, he's ahead in almost all of them so we can assume that it is accurate to predict that he's slightly ahead.

It's still too tight to call either way.

 

[Fac1]

Next Monday is going to be a crazy day. What were the polls like in the 2003 race, the week before Miller won?

 

[MetroMan]

Showdown: Televised Debate

This poll was good to confirm the trend but the determining poll will be the one held after the final high profile televised debate. Most voting Torontonians will be paying attention with days until election day and the televised debate will be where many of them will make up their minds.

It's too bad that Joe will be in it because he'll be attacking Smitherman, not Ford. Smitherman will have to focus on Joe as well as Ford who might get to snooze on the side like he's done for every debate.

If it were George VS Ford, there's no doubt in my mind that Smitherman would come out looking really polished and the obvious choice for Mayor. Ford would have his repetitive one liners and Smitherman would be able to attack Ford based on straightforward facts. Win win on both accounts for Smitherman.

I don't expect Joe to drop out so close to election day (what's the point if he's not going to endorse Smitherman anyway?) so he'll be betting the farm on the final televised debate. This scares me.

 

[MetroMan]

Next Monday is going to be a crazy day. What were the polls like in the 2003 race, the week before Miller won?

I don't remember the exact numbers from 7 years ago, but I do recall that Tory edged close to Miller but never came first in the polls that week. I do remember clearly that Barbara Hall had way more than what she ended up with (9%). It was definitely a nail biter until the end. I worked on Miller's campaign and remember that I was very excited that he had reached that far (he started at the very bottom as an unknown councillor) and was the candidate with the momentum (and "great hair") going into election day.

 

[Fac1]

Is the 7pm debate on Tuesday night going to be the final one? Anyone know if CP24 streams it online, or if some 3rd party does?