Ontario votes 2026
Bettors have four sitting Ontario mayors losing today
Betting site Polymarket has markets on 23 Ontario mayoral races where the mayor is running again. Bettors have the mayors of Mississauga, Cambridge, Hamilton and Waterloo losing. Toronto's Olivia Chow is at 86 per cent, though her final polls were close.
Ontario votes for mayors and councils today, October 26. Most cities have no public polls, so for many races the only published forecast comes from betting markets. Economist Mike Moffatt flagged the pattern on X on Sunday.
On Polymarket, people buy shares that pay out one US dollar if a candidate wins. A share trading at 8 cents means bettors give that candidate roughly an 8 per cent chance.
Polymarket has markets for 23 Ontario races where the sitting mayor is running again. In four of them, bettors now favour a challenger. Three of those four mayors were above 50 per cent at some point since late August. Hamilton's Andrea Horwath never was.
Mississauga's mayor is the longest shot
Carolyn Parrish, who won a 2024 by-election, is priced at 8 per cent. Bonnie Crombie, the former Mississauga mayor and Ontario Liberal leader, is at 60. Parrish was at 36 in Moffatt's screenshot on Sunday.
Cambridge's Jan Liggett is at 19 per cent against Scott Hamilton at 76. In Hamilton, Horwath, the former Ontario NDP leader elected mayor in 2022, is at 24 against Keanin Loomis at 55. Waterloo's Dorothy McCabe is at 26, with Shannon Weber at 68.
Toronto's polls are much closer than the odds
Olivia Chow is at 86 per cent against Brad Bradford at 14. The polls published in the final two weeks were far tighter, averaging Chow 49.6 and Bradford 47.0. Chow's 2.6-point lead is smaller than the 4.4-point average miss of Toronto's final polls in 2014 and 2023.
Three more mayors lead their top challenger but sit below two in three: Stratford's Martin Ritsma (48), Niagara Falls' Jim Diodati (49) and Pickering's Kevin Ashe (57).
Ten mayors are priced at 90 per cent or more, led by Vaughan's Steven Del Duca, Richmond Hill's David West and Kitchener's Berry Vrbanovic.
Most of these markets are small
Toronto's market has drawn about 813,000 US dollars in bets and Ottawa's about 114,000. Most of the others have under 25,000, and Niagara Falls and St. Catharines under 3,000. Small markets can move fast. Parrish's price fell from 34 to 8 between Sunday morning and Monday morning.
The prices show what a fairly small group of bettors expects. They are not a survey of voters. Turnout is low as well: only three of 27 large Canadian cities averaged more than 40 per cent turnout in municipal elections since 2016.
Results come in tonight. Between 13,000 and 47,000 US dollars was bet on each of the four races where the mayor trails.
