The 2026 mayoral election: Local landslides

A geography of local landslides

Chow won by a wide margin in most parts of the city. In fact, 58% of polls (including ward-level advance and mail-in polls) were decided by a 20 percentage point margin or more. As in previous elections, where candidates did well, they generally did very well. It was, as is typically true in Toronto mayoral elections, a geography of local landslides.

Chow largely replicated the map of election-day support in 2023, but with higher percentages. She beat Bradford handily in core neighbourhoods, racking up margins of 20 percentage points or more south of St. Clair within the former City of Toronto, York and East York. As past progressive candidates discovered – see Keesmaat in 2018 and Peñalosa in 2022, and indeed Chow herself in 2014 – winning these neighbourhoods alone would not have been enough. Chow was pushed over the top by gaining strong support in specific neighbourhoods outside the core. In Etobicoke and York, she did well along the Weston Road corridor and in the apartment neighbourhoods in the northwest corner of the city, as well as south of the Queensway in Mimico, New Toronto, and Long Branch. In North York, she racked up a vote surplus in York University and Jane and Finch, and also in the Don Mills corridor above and below Highway 401.

Core, suburbs, and the Scarborough factor

Chow mounted an effective “core-plus” strategy – running up votes in her “home base” in the city’s core while picking up votes wherever she could in the city’s inner suburbs. About 44% of the votes she received were cast in the former City of Toronto. This is the only way that progressive mayoral candidates have won since amalgamation. David Miller did it in 2003 and 2006, and Chow in 2023. All other progressive candidates have failed by making only limited inroads beyond the core. Chow’s capture of suburban votes in 2026 rivals only Miller’s in 2006, another two-way race.

While Chow’s 2026 map resembles her 2023 map in many ways, she performed better (and sometimes worse) relative to the citywide average in this election compared to the previous one. The map below shows where she gained or lost support in relative terms. While she received a higher vote share in all city neighbourhoods, and a bump of 20.4 percentage points citywide, she lost ground in relative terms north of Highway 401 and along the better-off northern segments of Yonge Street and Bathurst Street. In contrast, she gained ground in relative terms in the “U” of less-well-off neighbourhoods and in Scarborough south of the 401.

Matt Elliot wrote in the Toronto Star that her path to victory ran through Scarborough, and she did very well there. She won 81% of election-day polls and 92% of advance polls in the former borough, achieving a 53% vote share. Indeed, Scarborough is the only outer suburban municipality she won. Bradford won narrow majorities in Etobicoke and North York only. Could she have won without a strong showing in Scarborough? Yes. Imagine if Bradford and Chow’s vote shares had been swapped, and Bradford had taken Scarborough by 53% to Chow’s 40%. Chow still would have won the citywide vote 52% to 44%. She had enough votes everywhere else.

In the next post we’ll look in more detail at what types of neighbourhoods supported each major candidate.