Is Olivia Chow's Lead Big Enough? Toronto Mayor Polls, Mapped

Toronto picks its mayor on Monday, Oct. 26. Polls are open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. To find where to vote, use the City's MyVote lookup. It is a two-person race between Mayor Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford, the city councillor for Beaches-East York. Former Conservative MP Chris Alexander was the third name in the polls until he dropped out on Oct. 6. He did not endorse anyone.

A lot of the vote is already in. The City of Toronto says 222,550 people voted during the six advance voting days, Oct. 6 to 11. That is 72 per cent more than the 129,745 who voted early in the 2023 by-election, when about 725,000 people voted in total.

Who is winning the Toronto mayoral race?

It depends on the firm. Seven firms have finished a poll since Oct. 12, the last two weeks of the campaign. Four have Chow ahead and three have Bradford ahead. Averaging the latest poll from each gives Chow 49.6 per cent and Bradford 47.0, a lead of 2.6 points.

The spread between firms is wider than the lead. Pollara, published by Global News, has Chow up 11: 55 to 44 (Oct. 16 to 21, 1,094 people). That poll was paid for by CUPE Local 416, a city workers' union that endorsed Chow on Oct. 1. At the other end, Build Canada, a policy group that ran and paid for its own poll, has Bradford up 4: 48 to 44 (Oct. 11 to 16, 991 people). Leave both of those out and Chow's lead is 2.2 points.

Mainstreet Research (Oct. 16 to 18) and Liaison Strategies (Oct. 18 to 19) also have Bradford ahead, by 1 and 2 points. Before the last two weeks, Bradford had not led a single campaign poll.

Scope Research and Forum Research each released one poll on Oct. 6 (Chow +4 for both) and none since, so they are left out of this average. Firms also count undecided voters differently: some report only decided voters, others add people who lean to a candidate.

Did Bradford gain at Chow's expense?

Chow's support has hardly moved all campaign. In the last poll from each firm before Alexander quit, she averaged 49.3 per cent. In the final two weeks she averages 49.6.

Bradford's support moved instead. He averaged 36.8 per cent before Oct. 6 and 47.0 in the final two weeks, a jump of about 10 points. Alexander was polling at 7.2 per cent on average when he left. Bradford picked up roughly all of it, plus a few points from people who had been undecided.

Chow has held about half the decided vote all campaign and has not gone above it. Bradford now has nearly everyone else.

How accurate were Toronto's polls in past elections?

In the city's two most recent close races, the final polls made the leader look safer than they were.

In 2014, the last polls from Forum Research, Ipsos and Mainstreet Research had John Tory ahead of Doug Ford by 10.3 points on average. Tory won by 6.6. In the 2023 by-election, the last polls from Mainstreet, Forum and Liaison had Chow ahead of Ana Bailão by 9.7 points on average. Chow won by 4.7.

The winner was right both times, but the margin was too big by 3.8 points in 2014 and 5.0 in 2023. The average miss was 4.4 points.

Two elections are a small sample, and each had its own late swing, so this is no forecast that 2026 will miss the same way. But a 4.4-point error on a 2.6-point lead would be enough to change the winner, in either direction.

What are the betting odds for Toronto mayor?

Betting markets are more confident than that. On Polymarket, where about 640,000 US dollars have been traded on the race, a Chow win was priced at about 64 cents on the dollar on Oct. 23. On Kalshi it traded at 65. On Polymarket, Chow traded between 77 and 90 cents from April to early October.

Where did Chow win in 2023?

The 2023 by-election map shows where each side starts. Chow won 14 of 25 wards. Her base was the old city: she took about half the vote in Toronto Centre, Toronto-Danforth, Parkdale-High Park, Davenport and Spadina-Fort York. She also won Scarborough North with 47 per cent.

Bailão won Etobicoke, North York's middle wards and most of the inner suburbs. Chow's weakest wards were Etobicoke Centre (21 per cent), Eglinton-Lawrence (24) and York Centre (24).

This year's polls show a similar split. Liaison's Oct. 18 to 19 poll has Chow ahead downtown, 55 to 41, and Bradford ahead in North York, 56 to 42, and Etobicoke, 63 to 35. Scarborough is split 49 to 48. Regional samples are small, but the shape matches 2023.

Five wards were decided by about a point or less, all of them in the inner suburbs. Humber River-Black Creek came down to 2 votes out of 15,936:

Those wards, plus the inner-suburban wards Bailão won comfortably, are where Bradford needs to beat Bailão's 2023 numbers. Chow, meanwhile, needs to hold her downtown share and keep turnout up in it.

Can Bradford win his own ward?

Bradford ran for mayor in 2023 and finished eighth citywide with 1.3 per cent. In his own ward, Beaches-East York, he got 4.7 per cent. Chow took 43.1 per cent there. This year he is the only serious alternative to Chow, rather than one of 102 candidates.

For other votes this month, see the BC election polls and riding map and how many mayors and councillors each province has per person.

When will Toronto's results be known?

Polls close at 8 p.m. on Monday. The City publishes unofficial results on election night, ward by ward. With more than 220,000 advance votes already cast and the polls this close, an early call may be hard.

Chow leads in four of seven final polls, by an average smaller than the error Toronto's final polls made in the last two close races. The polls can't call this one.