Sean Marshall

Tag: Election

  • Mapping the results of the 2018 election, Part I (updated)

    2018 Election - CityMayor25_150How each of Toronto’s 25 wards voted for mayor

    November 8, 2018: I updated this post to look at the results for fourth place mayoral candidate Saron Gebresellassi.

    I started this website four years ago after I began producing maps of the local council races and ward-level results of the 2014 municipal election and sharing them on Twitter. I figured that I would continue to map the results after the 2018 election. In this post, I start with the mayoral race results. Over the next two months, I will dive into the local council races as poll level data and poll boundary shapefiles are now available on the City of Toronto’s Open Data catalogue.

    John Tory’s landslide win this year was no surprise. Despite urban progressives’ frustration with his centre-right agenda, Tory has remained popular with a large segment of Toronto’s population. Until July of this year, there were no high profile challengers to Tory. Meanwhile the mayor assembled a campaign team that included Nick Kouvalis and Warren Kinsella, and had months to fund-raise a massive election war chest.

    Former Toronto chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat registered on July 27, 2018, the last day of nominations for mayor. Keesmaat decided to run for mayor after Tory delivered an inadequate response to Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 5 in July 2018, in which he called for a referendum rather than forcefully opposing Ford’s surprising and vindictive attack on Toronto City Council.

    Keesmaat did not have the time, organization, and money to make a strong campaign against Tory. Her platform was more progressive than Tory’s but still not distinctive or bold enough. Keesmaat even promised to keep property tax increases at or below the level of inflation, Tory’s key plank.

    It was no surprise that Tory was able to win with 63 percent of the vote, coming in first in all 25 wards, and 1599 of 1700 regular election day polls. Tory placed first in every poll won by Doug Ford in 2014.

    Keesmaat placed first in only 101 polls, with all except one of those being in the old City of Toronto (the other poll was York University).

    2018-election-citymayor.jpgPoll-by-poll results for the 2018 mayoral race

    Interestingly, but not too surprisingly, the polls in which Keesmaat placed first were very similar to those polls where Olivia Chow did best in 2014 — established west Downtown neighbourhoods such as the Annex, Little Italy-Palmerston, Seaton Village, the Junction, and Parkdale. Had the old 44 wards still been in use, Keesmaat would have placed first in three wards — old Wards 14, 18, and 19, the same as Chow’s results in 2014. These neighbourhoods are clearly the urban progressive base.

    Tory finished first in central and east downtown neighbourhoods, including the areas with younger, more diverse populations such as City Place, the Entertainment District, and Liberty Village. It’s also quite clear that Keesmaat failed to capture the imagination of large segments of Toronto’s population — especially in areas with large populations of immigrants and visible minorities. Any left-leaning challenger needs to win over not only the suburbs, but also downtown condo dwellers.

     

    2018
    2014

    Maps of the mayoral race results at the ward level, with the old 2014 ward boundaries

    Coming in third place in the 2018 mayoral election was white supremacist Faith Goldy, who managed to win over 25,000 votes, or 3.4 percent of all votes cast. Goldy fared poorly in most polls, and she failed to win more than 20 percent of the vote in any of those polls. But still, she was able to get over 10 percent of the votes in 16 polls across Toronto. They are mapped below. Goldy’s support was highest in the suburbs, especially central Etobicoke and in the Bathurst-Sheppard area, and in north Scarborough.

    2018-election-citymayor_fg.jpgMost of those polls where Goldy got relatively high percentages of the vote had few total ballots cast. Poll 68 in Ward 17, a condo building near Leslie Street and Sheppard Avenue, had the highest vote percentage for Goldy, though this was only 7 of 35 total votes for mayor.  Poll 1 in Ward 19 had the highest absolute number of Faith Goldy supporters (excluding advance polls), with 86 out of 1030 mayoral votes cast.

    Still, it saddens me to see a xenophobic, racist fringe candidate get as much support as she did in Toronto, a city whose motto is “diversity our strength.”

    After I wrote this blog entry on Wednesday, Brittany Andrew-Amofah on Twitter suggested that I take a look at the results for fourth place candidate Saron Gebresellassi. Gebresellassi’s platform was stronger than Keesmaat’s, focusing on housing, transit, mental health supports, and opportunities for youth and racialized communities, especially in Toronto’s inner suburbs. Gebresellassi argued strongly for these issues at mayoral debates.

    Unfortunately, Gebresellassi only got 2 percent of the city-wide vote. She fared better in eight wards in central Toronto, as well as in York South-Weston, Humber River-Black Creek and Scarborough Southwest. Perhaps not coincidentally, these eleven wards were also the provincial ridings won by the NDP in the June provincial election. Gebresellassi’s highest support was in Ward 9 – Davenport, where she got 5.2% of all votes cast. Ward 9 is also where Keesmaat had the highest support, nearly beating Tory.

    2018 Election - CityMayor25_SG.jpgWard-level results for Saron Gebresellassi

    Gebresellassi took more than 10 percent of the vote in 17 polls. Many of these polls were located in Toronto Community Housing (TCH) buildings, co-ops, and shelters. Twenty-four percent of all voters in Poll 22 in Ward 13, located at a TCH property in St. Jamestown, chose Gebresellassi.

    Saron Gebresellassi spoke passionately about the right for safe and affordable housing, and many voters, especially those living in social housing took notice.

    2018-election-citymayor_sg-e1541722054979.jpg
    Poll-level results for Saron Gebresellassi. Polls in which Saron Gebresellassi got more than 10 percent of the vote are labelled; the three polls where she placed second (to John Tory) are underlined.

    As I mentioned before, I plan to take a close look at the council races over the next little while. Despite a frustrating and at times dispiriting municipal election here in Toronto, it’s worthwhile, I think, to look back at what happened. How did some incumbent councillors win, while others lost? How did the new boundaries change local dynamics?

  • Mapping the 2018 candidates for Toronto’s 47 wards (Updated)

    18506683800_6c96dcc66b_k

    September 10, 2018
    This morning, the Ontario Superior Court ruled against Bill 5, finding that the bill  “substantially interfered with the municipal candidate’s freedom of expression that is guaranteed under [Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.]”

    Barring a successful provincial appeal (or invoking Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, also known as the Notwithstanding Clause), this is once again the map of council candidates for the October 22 election.

    September 12, 2018
    Oh, never mind. We’re back to the 25 wards because its not as if Doug Ford has anything better to do than override a judicial finding with the Notwithstanding Clause and re-introducing the vindictive legislation. And we may not even get to vote in advance polls.

    Once the new law is passed, there will be two days for council candidates to sign up to run in the 25 wards.


    August 15, 2018

    Bill 5, the so-called “Better Local Government Act,” passed third reading on August 13, 2018, and was given royal assent on Tuesday August 14, despite vigourous opposition from the New Democratic Party. Bill 5 passed without any public consultation that usually takes place with any government legislation, as the Progressive Conservatives used procedural tactics to push through the bill as quickly as possible.

    (A new map of the 25 wards can be found here.)

    This means that legally, the City of Toronto must follow the province’s edict and elect only twenty-five councillors, with wards based on the current provincial riding boundaries. Scarborough Councillor Glenn De Baremaeker has already announced that he will no longer seek re-election.

    I have no intentions of removing the map below, but I will be creating a new 25-ward map and populating it once nominations re-open. I suspect that many council candidates will not re-register, and that there will be many more incumbents facing off against each other.

    There’s a faint hope that a legal injunction could suspend Bill 5. Council candidate and lawyer Rocco Achampong is seeking one, the courts will hear arguments by the end of the month.

    (more…)

  • Mapping the Ward 2 by-election

    Ward 2 By-election
    Poll results of the 2016 council race in Ward 2

    On Monday, July 25, residents of Ward 2 (Etobicoke North) went to the polls to elect a new councillor to replace the late Rob Ford, who was elected as councillor in the 2014 general election after a disastrous four years as mayor.

    After Rob Ford’s death in March 2016, it was widely expected that the Ford family would field a candidate; it would either be former Ward 2 councillor Doug Ford or Rob and Doug’s nephew Michael Ford (née Stirpe).

    Michael Ford, then 20 years old, ran for councillor in the 2014 general election. He withdrew in September 2014 to run for the local Toronto District School Board trustee position, so that Rob Ford could run for councillor instead, abandoning his bid for re-election as Mayor of Toronto due to his poor health. Doug Ford, who originally wasn’t going to run again for municipal office, ran for mayor in Rob’s place, coming in a strong second to John Tory. I mapped those results in a previous post. 

    Right away, Michael Ford was the clear favourite to win the by-election. The Ford name is famous in north Etobicoke; Doug Ford Senior was a Progressive Conservative MPP from 1995 to 1999; Rob Ford represented Ward 2 from 2000 through 2010 before running for mayor, and winning against George Smitherman. But Michael Ford, only 22, claimed to be his own person; his brief tenure on the TDSB board has been without the buffoonery or intolerance that Rob and Doug exhibited; Michael attended the 2016 Pride Parade in 2016, something the other Fords made a point of avoiding. But Michael Ford campaigned on a platform of “customer service” — the same philosophy that made Rob Ford popular in his ward.

    There were eleven candidates running against Michael Ford. They included:

    • Entrepreneur Justin Canning, a right-of-centre candidate who made a point of saying that Michael isn’t like Rob and Doug Ford when quoted in the Toronto Star;
    • Christopher Strain, a New Democrat who managed Russ Ford’s campaign for councillor in Ward 6 in the 2014 election;
    • Chloe-Marie Brown, a volunteer and City Hall intern who sought to represent her community and bring attention to the needs of lower income residents of North Etobicoke.

    Voter turnout was low, as they often are for municipal by-elections. Only 9391 residents voted in 2016, less than half the 19,793 votes for councillor that were cast in 2014. And to no one’s surprise, Michael Ford won, with 70.0%of the vote. Justin Canning came in a very distant second, with 20.4%, Chris Strain had only 3.8% of the vote, Chloe-Marie Brown only got 1.6%.

    Michael Ford came in first place in all by two polls by wide margins, as shown in the map above. Only two polls, 020 and 024, chose Justin Canning. Poll 020 represents two condo towers on Islington Avenue at Dixon Road, while Poll 024 represents a seniors’ residence on Lawrence Avenue. Both polls voted for Rob Ford for council in 2014, but for John Tory for mayor over Doug Ford.

    Even though I am willing to give Michael Ford a chance to prove himself as city councillor (and we will see how different he truly is from his uncles), the low voter turnout and the inevitability of Ford’s win still troubles me. Perhaps the low turnout was partly due to the assumption that Ford would win this by-election; holding it in the middle of summer wouldn’t have helped either. But there was a solid choice of alternative, qualified candidates that deserved voters’ consideration. Ward 2 deserved a real contest, not another coronation.