Toronto Mayoral By Election

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

At least 46 people are running!? Is the Rhino party helping to get a long ballot or the candidates are all reaaly seeking the job.

Not a Rhino situation. Like Benjamin Frank said, it's not uncommon for dozens of unserious candidates to run in Toronto mayoral elections. The requirements/qualifications set a very low bar. If you're a Canadian citizen who lives or owns land in Toronto, has $200, and can convince 25 people to sign your nomination papers, you too can get your name on the ballot!

That said, this time is a little different because it's an open seat and there's really no obvious successor to John Tory, so everyone thinks they have a shot. I think Bailao, Chow, Hunter, Matlow and Saunders can be considered the "tier one" candidates who have an actual shot. Bradford, Furey and Perruzza could put in a serious run, but won't win. Caesar-Chavannes, Climenhaga, D'Angelo, Davis, Mammoliti, and Sky are notable in some vague way, but I wouldn't take them seriously.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I haven't been following the Toronto mayoral race too closely as of yet, but the candidate I find the most interesting at the moment is Mark Saunders. I'll wait for policy platforms to be released though.

Conservatives certainly seem to be rallying around Saunders, or they almost certainly will, because he's the only conservative-aligned candidate with a serious shot. As a former police chief he's uniquely positioned to run on crime as the main issue, which tends to be a winning issue for the right. Now, his time as police chief was controversial, but mostly with people who wouldn't vote for him anyway.

That said, he does need to consolidate the right and count on a split left to have a shot, and while the latter is almost guaranteed, the former is complicated by Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey. He's also running, but whereas Saunders is more of a "Ford Tory", Furey is more of a "Poilievre Tory", if that makes sense. Furey doesn't have a realistic shot, but he does have enough of a profile and following that he might split the vote.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Yeah I wouldn't read into Bailao adding Kouvalis to her campaign team too much. Brad Bradford, another left-leaning councillor, is being advised by Kory Teneycke, who among other things was a staffer for Harper and was the brains behind Doug Ford's 2018 campaign. I don't think either of them are turning a new leaf and becoming Tories, it's more that when you have a competitive nonpartisan election it helps to have strategists who can figure out a strategy to appeal to voters who normally might not vote for you.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

That said, this time is a little different because it's an open seat and there's really no obvious successor to John Tory, so everyone thinks they have a shot. I think Bailao, Chow, Hunter, Matlow and Saunders can be considered the "tier one" candidates who have an actual shot. Bradford, Furey and Perruzza could put in a serious run, but won't win. Caesar-Chavannes, Climenhaga, D'Angelo, Davis, Mammoliti, and Sky are notable in some vague way, but I wouldn't take them seriously.

Most observers would bump Bradford from 2nd to 1st tier.  He's always had a vibe of a potential "John Tory anointed successor" about him.

I haven't been following the Toronto mayoral race too closely as of yet, but the candidate I find the most interesting at the moment is Mark Saunders. I'll wait for policy platforms to be released though.

Conservatives certainly seem to be rallying around Saunders, or they almost certainly will, because he's the only conservative-aligned candidate with a serious shot. As a former police chief he's uniquely positioned to run on crime as the main issue, which tends to be a winning issue for the right. Now, his time as police chief was controversial, but mostly with people who wouldn't vote for him anyway.

That said, he does need to consolidate the right and count on a split left to have a shot, and while the latter is almost guaranteed, the former is complicated by Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey. He's also running, but whereas Saunders is more of a "Ford Tory", Furey is more of a "Poilievre Tory", if that makes sense. Furey doesn't have a realistic shot, but he does have enough of a profile and following that he might split the vote.

I think Furey's one of those candidates who seems more of a factor through the wonkish filter of political Twitter than he'd be in actuality.

And let's remember that it's more complicated than a Saunders-vs-a-split-left race--just because Saunders is a candidate of the right doesn't make him the candidate of the John Tory big tent; and you can be sure that Bailao and Bradford in particular will make (and *are* making) strong bids for *that* vote.  That is, *they're* more likely to be injurious to Saunders than Furey is...

Point taken on both, admittedly it was a little uncharitable to place Bradford along with Perruzza and Furey. As for Saunders, I agree it's not a clean left/right split (it never is in Toronto politics), but he seems to be making crime and public safety the main part of his pitch to build up a suburban conservative coalition, and while Bradford and Bailao may make a convincing pitch to suburban tories on other issues, Saunders probably has them beat on this issue than crime.

Now keep in mind, when I say "Suburban tories", I don't mean all or even most John Tory voters. Suburbanites who actually lean right are outnumbered by Liberal-leaning "Trudeau-Tory" centrist suburbanites, and Bradford and Bailao (and Hunter in Scarborough, she might struggle with the packed field in the other boroughs though) are a better fit for those John Tory voters. Matlow seems to be hitching his wagon to more left-wing, "Trudeau-Horwath" type voters, and Chow is obviously the best fit for loyal Dippers - she's kinda old news at this point, but name recognition and past support can go a long way in these kinds of races.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

That said, this time is a little different because it's an open seat and there's really no obvious successor to John Tory, so everyone thinks they have a shot. I think Bailao, Chow, Hunter, Matlow and Saunders can be considered the "tier one" candidates who have an actual shot. Bradford, Furey and Perruzza could put in a serious run, but won't win. Caesar-Chavannes, Climenhaga, D'Angelo, Davis, Mammoliti, and Sky are notable in some vague way, but I wouldn't take them seriously.

Most observers would bump Bradford from 2nd to 1st tier.  He's always had a vibe of a potential "John Tory anointed successor" about him.

I haven't been following the Toronto mayoral race too closely as of yet, but the candidate I find the most interesting at the moment is Mark Saunders. I'll wait for policy platforms to be released though.

Conservatives certainly seem to be rallying around Saunders, or they almost certainly will, because he's the only conservative-aligned candidate with a serious shot. As a former police chief he's uniquely positioned to run on crime as the main issue, which tends to be a winning issue for the right. Now, his time as police chief was controversial, but mostly with people who wouldn't vote for him anyway.

That said, he does need to consolidate the right and count on a split left to have a shot, and while the latter is almost guaranteed, the former is complicated by Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey. He's also running, but whereas Saunders is more of a "Ford Tory", Furey is more of a "Poilievre Tory", if that makes sense. Furey doesn't have a realistic shot, but he does have enough of a profile and following that he might split the vote.

I think Furey's one of those candidates who seems more of a factor through the wonkish filter of political Twitter than he'd be in actuality.

And let's remember that it's more complicated than a Saunders-vs-a-split-left race--just because Saunders is a candidate of the right doesn't make him the candidate of the John Tory big tent; and you can be sure that Bailao and Bradford in particular will make (and *are* making) strong bids for *that* vote.  That is, *they're* more likely to be injurious to Saunders than Furey is...

Saunders seems like he will be the candidate of the more right-leaning half of John Tory voters and most Rob Ford/Doug Ford voters. If you base your info on the 2014 mayoral election, this would be roughly 50-55% of the Toronto electorate, give or take (Doug Ford voters in that election made up 33.73% of the electorate, John Tory voters made up 40.28% of the electorate and if you take one half of that, presumably the more right-leaning half, it would be 20.14% of Toronto voters, adding up to 53.87%).

Based on my completely unscientific analysis, this means Saunders would do well in Northern Etobicoke, in North York but moreso further to the west of the area, particularly in wards 8 and 9, and Scarborough, especially further north.

I know you're not saying that Saunders will actually get 54% of the vote, that's just the pond he can fish out of. That said, I'd be careful reading into the Ford Nation vote too much. Many of those voters were loyal to Rob Ford, and to a lesser extent Doug Ford, more than any ideological association. Other right-wing politicians have tried very hard to tap into the Ford Nation vote with little success, because many of the most loyal Ford supporters weren't actually right-wing in a general sense.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Yeah I wouldn't read into Bailao adding Kouvalis to her campaign team too much. Brad Bradford, another left-leaning councillor, is being advised by Kory Teneycke, who among other things was a staffer for Harper and was the brains behind Doug Ford's 2018 campaign. I don't think either of them are turning a new leaf and becoming Tories, it's more that when you have a competitive nonpartisan election it helps to have strategists who can figure out a strategy to appeal to voters who normally might not vote for you.

But one could also rightly claim that neither are "left-leaning" in the same way that David Miller was (and Miller had an assist from Tory operatives such as John Laschinger).

Yeah but I'm using left/right in very broad strokes as it applies to municipal politics. Left = more emphasis on things like more social housing, harm-reduction approach to addiction, more skeptical of police, "urban" infrastructure like bike lanes and streetcars, more open to tax increases, etc. Right = more emphasis on private development, treatment-based approach to addiction, pro-police, "suburban" infrastructure like roads and subways, very against tax increases, etc.

Obviously there's a matter of how far you go to either end, or what you co-opt from the other side. For example, I think any nominal candidate of the "left" has to tack a little more conservative on crime/policing to build a wide coalition in the current climate, and Saunders has to tack a little more left on things like building more subsidized housing.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Saunders seems like he will be the candidate of the more right-leaning half of John Tory voters and most Rob Ford/Doug Ford voters. If you base your info on the 2014 mayoral election, this would be roughly 50-55% of the Toronto electorate, give or take (Doug Ford voters in that election made up 33.73% of the electorate, John Tory voters made up 40.28% of the electorate and if you take one half of that, presumably the more right-leaning half, it would be 20.14% of Toronto voters, adding up to 53.87%).

Based on my completely unscientific analysis, this means Saunders would do well in Northern Etobicoke, in North York but moreso further to the west of the area, particularly in wards 8 and 9, and Scarborough, especially further north.

I know you're not saying that Saunders will actually get 54% of the vote, that's just the pond he can fish out of. That said, I'd be careful reading into the Ford Nation vote too much. Many of those voters were loyal to Rob Ford, and to a lesser extent Doug Ford, more than any ideological association. Other right-wing politicians have tried very hard to tap into the Ford Nation vote with little success, because many of the most loyal Ford supporters weren't actually right-wing in a general sense.

Yeah, I should have clarified. He won't get 54% of the vote but that's his potential voters, the pond he will fish out of.

And when it comes to that particular N Etobicoke/North York electorate, this is where somebody like Perruzza might be worth monitoring as a potential vote-stealing sleeper factor.

Oh yeah. You really can't put voters in this part of the City on a left/right spectrum, at least when it comes to municipal elections. In 2014, Doug Ford ran as the most right-wing candidate for mayor, lost big to John Tory in the parts of the City with the most partisan Conservatives, but cleaned up in the parts of the City that gave Trudeau his best performances just a year later.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I must admit, I hadn't actually seen anything from Brad Bradford, just assumed that he was just going for the "vaguely progressive councillor from the Old City" lane which is competitive and not necessarily a winning strategy in Toronto mayoral elections. To be fair, I'm not actually from Toronto. So I went through his twitter for a bit (no platform yet) and he actually seems to be tacking right, which would be a terrible strategy running in Beaches--East York, but smart if you're running for mayor and want to tap into Ford Nation. No platform yet, but his announcement video suggests he's trying to tap into that vote. One might even say he's even taking a few notes from Poilievre's playbook.

And yeah, Bradford's messaging focuses very heavily on crime and public safety, and the only candidate he's attacked so far is Mark Saunders, in a way that's clearly trying to compete for the suburban conservative vote. He put out an attack video on Saunders and a post that, once again, could easily be something Poilievre would put out against Trudeau.

So it's probably not that surprising that he tapped Kory Teneycke as a campaign advisor. If you're not familiar, Teneycke ran the PCPO's 2018 campaign, so he's a good guy to have at your side if you're trying to win over suburban conservatives.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Olivia Chow is in- she signed up to run this morning.

Looks like there will be 6 main candidates (from left wing to right wing):

Olivia Chow, former NDP MP
Josh Matlow, city councillor
Mitzie Hunter, Liberal MPP
Ana Bilao, city councillor
Brad Bradford, city councillor
Mark Saunders, former chief of police

Matlow and Bradford have been more centrist in the past but have tacked leftward/rightward respectively in this campaign.

Olivia Chow is well-known, but I get the feeling that she might be a paper tiger in this race, particularly if the left-wing vote decides to coalesce around someone more "electable"

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Olivia Chow is in- she signed up to run this morning.

Looks like there will be 6 main candidates (from left wing to right wing):

Olivia Chow, former NDP MP
Josh Matlow, city councillor
Mitzie Hunter, Liberal MPP
Ana Bilao, city councillor
Brad Bradford, city councillor
Mark Saunders, former chief of police

Matlow and Bradford have been more centrist in the past but have tacked leftward/rightward respectively in this campaign.

Olivia Chow is well-known, but I get the feeling that she might be a paper tiger in this race, particularly if the left-wing vote decides to coalesce around someone more "electable"

It's possible, but is Matlow all that electable? I heard he's absolutely loathed in the suburbs.

Yeah I don't know, but it's not like Chow's winning the burbs either. Matlow at least has a head start and is a relatively fresh face

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Toronto drivers do need more policing actually, especially in intersections.

Pro-police but pro-pedestrian, that's some #EnlightenedCentrism if I've ever seen it

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Olivia Chow is well-known, but I get the feeling that she might be a paper tiger in this race, particularly if the left-wing vote decides to coalesce around someone more "electable"

And in the event that the race boils down to "stop Mark Saunders", that "someone" might not turn out to be all that satisfactorily left wing after all, a la John Tory as the "stop Doug Ford" candidate in '14.

Oh yeah. Splitting the "Old City left" further is 2022 runner-up Gil Penalosa, who also announced his run. The "stop Mark Saunders/Brad Bradford" candidate might end up being someone like Ana Bailao, who's preferable but not satisfactory to progressives. But hey, "preferable but not satisfactory" did wonders for John Tory.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Endorsements are a big deal in municipal politics, which lack parties, so voters use them as a cue as to who to vote for. I'm fully expecting Bailao to pull away and win this at this point, as she coalesces the centre vote.

Interestingly, Saunders isn't getting any of the traditional Tory endorsements. They're all going to Furey, who is polling at 1%

Now to be fair, the traditional Tory endorsements going to Furey, while still notable, aren't the most relevant Tory endorsements. 0/12 PC MPPs have made an endorsement so far, and they would be the most important ones as far as this election goes.

Saunders and Bradford have probably been hurting each other more than any of their left-wing opponents. They're both trying to run on the law and order lane, which is the best approach for right-wing candidates in Toronto right now, except both are having their credibility attacked from the right - Bradford attacking Saunders for being an ineffective police chief, and Saunders pointing out Bradford's vote to cut police funding. And I mean, Bradford's cynical pivot to the right is a bit too obvious.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

New poll out by Liaison Strategies. Never heard of them, and their numbers are a bit different than MSR's, at least when it comes to Bailao.

Chow 23
Matlow 21
Saunders 19
Bradford 11
Bailão 9
Hunter 9

Now, I believe MSR is Bailao's pollster, so that might be why she's doing well in their results. Of course, if they're doing most of the polling, their numbers will shape the narrative.

It's notable that the left-wing candidates are polling as well as they are. This isn't the only poll showing Chow+Matlow > 40%, in fact most are showing that.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

So this race is basically Olivia Chow's to lose at this point.

- Matlow's going nowhere, I think he'll hold onto wonky midtown progressives but lose the overall left.

- Bailao is only polling well in her internals, which is a bad sign - the fact that she's getting Liberals and unions lining up to support her and still isn't pulling ahead doesn't bode well.

- Saunders is kind of a dud, it's disappointing that he was the best the right could muster up

- Bradford is a better retail politician but he's a formerly centre-left politician running as a Poilievre impersonator, people can see right through that and it shows. His polling is weak, and I think the right will rally around Saunders.

- I don't know what the hell Mitzie Hunter is doing, and it seems like she doesn't either. Could have been a serious candidate, and she's actually a very strong candidate on paper, but this mayoral campaign is going nowhere.

Debates will matter, so will turnout. Both municipal elections and byelections in Canada are notorious for low turnout, and this is both, so it might come down to GOTV. I think Saunders and Bailao still have an outside shot of consolidating enough of the anti-Chow vote, but it would require things to change. I really didn't think Olivia Chow had a future in politics, but hey, here we are.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

As tempting as it might be to draw parallels with the Ottawa mayoral election, its important to keep in mind that the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa as presently constituted are very very different. When Ottawa was amalgamated they appended lots of very exurban and rural areas to the city that are very conservative. The Toronto equivalent of those areas are all outside of the City of Toronto in York, Peel and Durham regions. This means that the Toronto electorate is far more left of centre than the Ottawa electorate.   

Yes but not by all that much. The combined CPC+PPC performance was 27% in Toronto and 33% in Ottawa in 2021, and the PCPO got 32% both cities in 2022. Ottawa votes slightly to the right of Toronto thanks to the amalgamation of rural areas, but just barely - and even without Poilievre country, Sutcliffe easily beats McKenney in Ottawa.

If it was a two-way "Chow vs generic centrist" race, generic centrist wins, like Sutcliffe did in Ottawa and Tory did repeatedly in Toronto. But Chow's main contender right now is pretty firmly conservative in a way Sutcliffe and Tory weren't, and Saunders isn't nearly as good a retail politician as Rob or even Doug Ford.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

It's a pity Toronto has such tightly drawn municipal boundaries; the city would be much better off it had boundaries more like Ottawa.

Like Ottawa? Like it should include all the suburbs AND some rural areas?

Well as a right-winger, I wouldn't mind elections under those boundaries but no, it would be a terrible idea. I'd argue the City of Toronto is too big as is, expanding it FURTHER would be a case study for what NOT to do in future public administration courses. I'm not flat-out anti-amalgamation, it can be a good idea in some cases. But there's absolutely no reason why Newmarket should be governed by the same mayor and council as downtown Toronto.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Skipping tonight's debate is yet another amateur hour decision by the Saunders campaign. You skip debates when you're ahead and have more to lose than gain. You DON'T skip debates when there's a billion candidates and you're trying to pull ahead.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The issue is that unamalgamated cities allow for segregation of wealth and resources from the common good. You see this in the U.S., where you get clusters of wealth and poverty and immense racial segregation. If you care about social inequality, amalgamation is a necessary tool to combat that.

Toronto would be MUCH better off with Newmarket and Oshawa brought in.

I don't mean this to be dismissive, but this reads like you're really not familiar with Toronto or the GTA, and applying the issues of US cities to a completely different context.

Toronto is an amalgamation of six pre-existing municipalities, and much of it is suburbia. Sure, Newmarket and Oshawa are considered Toronto suburbs now (debatable for Oshawa), but there are like seventeen more layers of suburbs before you get to "urban" Toronto, so it's not such a logical expansion. If all of the GTA were amalgamated into Toronto, you would get an area larger than New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philly combined.

Additionally, the non-Toronto parts of the GTA, by and large, aren't just Toronto's bedroom communities. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Oshawa, Ajax, Oakville etc all have significant economic activity happening within them. Oftentimes, they have their own bedroom communities, like people living in Stouffville and working in Markham. More than half of the GTA's population lives outside of Toronto. Amalgamating the GTA into Toronto would be like putting all of LA, Orange, Riverside counties into LA.

As for racial and economic segregation, ditto. GTA suburbs aren't sundown towns formed by 1960s white flight - to the contrary, many of them are immigrant towns. Toronto itself is very ethnically diverse too (and I'm not using diverse to mean not white, I mean genuinely diverse in a way that very few American cities can top). As for social/economic inequality, there's plenty of that within Toronto's borders, but it's really not a "rich suburbs/broke city" dynamic like in many US cities.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

How's about we get back to talking about the mayoral election and save discussion of merging Toronto with all the surrounding municipalities for another thread.

The first quasi-real debate was last night at the Daily Bread Food Bank and featured Chow, Bailao, Matlow, Hunter and Bradford. Saunders refused to attend.

Not sure there was any real news or any game changing performances. Bradford came across as a condescending, mansplaining asshole. The others were all OK. Chow was questioned by all the other candidates when each had a turn to grill another candidate. She handled it well enough and I just gave her more time to get out her points. The rightwing press is starting to panic about Chow winning but they still can't figure out who is the alternative and all the non-Chow candidates are very weak. 

There's been like zero coverage of the debate lol. I don't think it will change anything, which is good news for Olivia Chow.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I don't think we'll ever agree, unfortunately, and it honestly flummoxes me that people could not want the wonders of amalgamation. Regardless, we should probably stop derailing the thread.

Just wondering, why is a discussion regarding the merits and drawbacks of amalgamation considered to be derailing the thread? A thread about a Toronto mayoral election is inevitably going to have some degree of discussion about issues that affect Toronto and amalgamation is one of them.

Well it's not an issue in this particular campaign, which is what the thread is about. Amalgamation of Toronto in its current form is a done deal, and further expansion of the City of Toronto isn't being proposed by anyone. There are ongoing discussions about municipal re-organization in Peel Region, but that's a whole another topic.

Anyway, if amalgamation was meant to stop left-wing candidates from winning Toronto's mayoralty, the seemingly inevitable election of Chow will disprove that (wouldn't even be the first time, David Miller won under current boundaries too). Amalgamation was part of a neoliberal efficiency craze that took place in the 1990s, and while I'm sympathetic to a lot of the moves made as part of that era, the amalgamation of Toronto and the sale of the 407 are examples of how some of the Harris-era measures went too far (on the 407 I would argue the problem wasn't privatization, the problem was that only the 407 was privatized and ETR doesn't have any competition...but Ontario's not ready for that discussion lol).

Can't blame the derailing though. This election has been a total snooze-fest.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Amalgamation was perfectly logical given the massive expansion of Toronto since the 1970s and I've never seen a credible argument against the general principal, but it would have been a good idea to have converted the old municipalities into borough councils (effective just swapping around the power balance of what where then existing arrangements). It is also quite ridiculous to have such a large city with so few councillors: that's a state of affairs that positively encourages alienation from the electorate, though the public choice calculation amongst existing local politicians to prefer there to be very few of them is obvious enough.

Or even staying with the traditional upper/lower municipal structure would have been fine imo. Making Toronto a single-tier municipality didn't cut costs in any significant way, and in many ways actually increased red tape (planning and zoning in particular is an utter mess in Toronto, in large part due to grandfathered regulations and bylaws).

As for council size, Canadian city councils are very small in comparison to UK ones, but Canada also has provinces, an additional level of government. The role and scope of municipal governments are more limited, so I'm really not sure if larger council sizes would necessarily lead to better governance.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

This is off topic for the Toronto mayoral by election, but since the discussion has largely gone into city almagamation, this is going the other way and probably effects the provincial Liberal leadership race.

Moronic decision, if anything Peel should be amalgamated together because it is filled with near identical McMansions/ugly houses for miles with some retail shops/strip malls sprinkled in between, and there is little which separates Mississauga from Brampton.

Well, technically, there *is*: a big industrial buffer + the 407, power line corridors, etc  Mississauga & Brampton are more discrete than it appears (indeed, the suburbanization of Mayfield West means that Brampton and *Caledon* are on the verge of blurring more than Brampton & Mississauga--that is, unless Brampton winds up annexing everything N to the proposed 413 corridor)

Brampton is very much its own thing anyway. Much of the recent growth in Brampton is pretty unique for the GTA, in that there's been a boom in multi-generational households, chain migration, etc - not to mention foreign students, a group that I would argue Canada admits way more than we should, but that's another topic. Basement apartments are basically being mass-produced in Brampton, that's how a lot of the growth is being accommodated. It's a different type of growth than we are traditionally used to seeing, but Brampton's rapid growth has created basically a seamless transition from a low-density middle-class suburb, to a medium-density working-class city just in the last 10 years. Mississauga's really not the same in that sense, in that its growth is more typical of large suburban cities, and the growing demographic is less ethnically homogenous.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I had remote family in Brampton in the past and it's a really wierd place. Doesn't feel suburban at all.

I don't know how far back in the past you're going, but as of 2021 census, Brampton has a population of 656k. If it weren't right next to Toronto, that would be considered a big city in its own right.

Problem is, it was planned and designed as a suburb. So you have single-detached homes, leafy car-oriented neighbourhoods, strip malls, etc that would be perfect for a sleepy bedroom community, but an absolute nightmare for a city of the size Brampton has grown to become.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

MSR trying their best to steal the election for Bailao. You hate to see it:

Chow 30 (-1)
Bailão 21 (+6) (!!!)
Matlow 14 (+4)
Saunders 10 (-2)
Hunter 9 (nc)
Furey 7 (nc)
Bradford 4 (-2)

So if Bailao and Matlow are up a combined 10 and Saunders, Bradford and Chow are down a combined 5 - where did the other 5% come from? I guess from "other"...since this is factoring out DK, its not at the expense of that.

I don't quite understand what exactly MSR does to get Bailao so much higher than anyone else. Forum and Liaison are also IVR and they have her in single digits...

The rumour I heard is they're not properly rotating the names in the question, so Bailao always goes first. I suspect their doing some creative weighting as well, but I don't have anything to back that up.

As for the remaining 5%, that is indeed coming from "other" candidates.

And it seems like some Grits were tricked by the sheer quantity of loaded Mainstreet polls into thinking Bailao is the centrist frontrunner and endorsing her, even though Hunter is an actual partisan Liberal and isn't that far behind Bailao in non-Mainstreet polls