Bradford slightly ahead of Chow in Toronto mayoral race, two new polls show

Two new polls from Mainstreet Research and Build Canada have put Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford ahead of the incumbent mayor, Olivia Chow, with less than a week to go before Oct. 26, voting day in Canada’s largest city.

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Among decided voters (including those who have already marked their ballots in advance polls), Bradford has a slight edge over Chow, with 48.9 per cent support for the Beaches-East York councillor, against 47.5 per cent who favour the current mayor. (The remaining 3.6 per cent were split among 46 other candidates, with no one candidate receiving even a single percentage point.)

Taking undecided voters into account reveals a similar split, with 42.4 per cent favouring Bradford and 41.1 per cent on the side of Chow. However, a further 13.4 per cent said they remain undecided, meaning that group has the power to swing the election one way or the other.

“This race is truly too close to call, but Bradford now has the upper hand” Quito Maggi, President & CEO of Mainstreet Research, said in a statement.

“This represents a seismic shift in the Mayoral election in Toronto,” he added. “While we have seen this race tighten significantly throughout October, Chow had previously led wire to wire and led in three of four regions of Toronto.”

He concluded: “This race will come down to turnout and get-out-the-vote efforts from these campaigns. Bradford continues to lead among older voters who are more likely to vote, so he maintains that advantage.”

The Build Canada poll asked participants to say who they would vote for or, if they were undecided, who they were leaning towards. It found 48 per cent support for Bradford against 44 per cent for Chow, and eight per cent split among the remaining candidates.

Build Canada also asked respondents a variety of questions about life in Toronto, and priorities for the next municipal government. Asked to choose between “Toronto’s next mayor and council should try new ideas, even if some of them fail,” and “they should be careful, even if that means slower progress,” two thirds (67 per cent) opted for new ideas, while 23 per cent said play it safe.

Most of those polled (55 per cent) also said City Hall moved too slowly when making decisions, versus eight per cent who said it was too fast, and 16 per cent who thought it moved at the right pace.

The poll also found dissatisfaction with property taxes. Only five per cent of respondents said they got very good value for the tax they paid, while a quarter chose “fairly good value” and another quarter said “fairly poor value.” The largest group, at 37 per cent, said they got very poor value for their property taxes.

The Mainstreet poll also asked potential voters how likely they were to go to the ballot box, with a strong majority saying they planned to. Of those who had not voted already, 82.4 per cent said they definitely would, while another 8.1 per cent said they would probably vote. Only 3.5 per cent said they definitely would not be voting.

This is a marked departure from most municipal elections. In the 2023 election that brought Chow to the office of mayor, the turnout was 38.5 per cent, a nine per cent increase over the previous election in 2022.

However, the city has noted that advance voting is already far higher than in other recent elections. Over the six days of advance voting this month, 222,5550 eligible votes were cast. That’s almost double the number from the 2023 election, which saw almost 130,000 advance votes.

In an interview with National Post, Maggi also noted that past polls have always shown more people who claim to vote than actual do. He also pointed out that “the type of people who take time to complete a poll are also the type who are likely to vote.”

Mainstreet also asked Toronto voters to rate the importance of several issues in the election. Affordability and the cost of living was the highest ranked issue at 38.3 per cent, followed by traffic and transit (22.4 per cent) and crime and safety (16.4 per cent).

Perhaps looking to tap into that feeling, Bradford released a campaign ad yesterday in which his wife and daughter drop by a public appearance and find him promising people “a city that’s safer, a city that’s more affordable; I have a plan to get Toronto unstuck,” before adding: “But if we want to change the city, we have to change the mayor.”

The slick-looking ad drew some online comments that it might have been produced by AI, but the post on X now carries reader-generated content that it wasn’t. This includes behind-the-scenes photos and statements from the production team.

The Mainstreet poll was conducted Oct. 16 through Oct. 18 and involved 1,000 adult Toronto residents. It has a margin of error of 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Build Canada’s survey involved 991 randomly selected Toronto adults between Oct. 11 and Oct. 16, with the same margin of error.

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