Olivia Chow has been re-elected as mayor of Toronto, securing a comfortable victory against rival Brad Bradford.
Chow won 54.16 percent of the vote, well ahead of Bradford’s 41.11 percent. All results are unofficial until certified by the city clerk.
In the weeks leading up to the election, polls showed Bradford had managed to narrow what had started out as a wide gap between himself and Chow. But on election night Chow’s victory was decisive. She received more votes than any mayor since Toronto’s amalgamation. Her win signals continued public support for the more progressive direction she’s taken since she was first elected mayor in 2023.
“Tonight the people of Toronto have spoken. And they have given me the extraordinary honour to serve as your mayor,” Chow said in a victory speech at The Great Hall events venue on Queen St. West. “I am grateful, I am humbled and I am so proud of our city.”
Despite a staggering 53 mayoral candidates on the ballot, this year’s election clearly became a two-person race between them after former Conservative MP Chris Alexander dropped out on the first day of advanced voting. The third place candidate, Braeden Chow—who Olivia Chow’s campaign worried could cause confusion at the ballot box—earned 0.82 percent of the vote.
Photo by Nic Hotchkiss / The Local
Less than a week before voting day, a Liaison Strategies poll indicated Bradford had caught up to Chow’s earlier lead, putting him slightly ahead. To avoid splitting the vote, one candidate, culture journalist Odessa Paloma Parker, announced she was withdrawing, and encouraged her supporters to back Chow.
The Numbers
Voter turnout was 46 percent this election, compared with a turnout of 38.5 percent in the 2023 by-election and a record-breaking low of just 29 percent in 2022.
Chow won 19 of 25 wards, edging Bradford in wards like Etobicoke North and Don Valley North, and decisively beating him throughout the old city of Toronto.
While Chow’s strongest voter base was in the city core, she also won all six Scarborough wards. By comparison, Bradford led in the northwest of the city.
Chow’s Promises
Back in 2023, Chow had defeated Bradford handily to become the city’s first progressive mayor since David Miller, the first female mayor in post-amalgamation Toronto, and the first non-white mayor in the city’s history. In that mayoral by-election, sparked by John Tory’s resignation after an affair with a staffer became public, Bradford had come in eighth place, with just 1.28 percent of the votes.
Photo by Nic Hotchkiss / The Local
Since then, highlights of Chow’s mayorship have included negotiating a new deal with the province that delivered a massive injection of financial support to the City. That deal also removed the costs of repairing the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway from the City’s books, and in exchange, Chow dropped the City’s opposition to the province’s redevelopment of Ontario Place. She has also raised property taxes, supported increasing the police budget and police hiring, brought forward a bylaw to protect renters from renovictions, extended library hours, expanded a school food program, and introduced a new TTC fare-capping system.
But she’s also received criticism, including from progressive Torontonians, for voting in favour of a “bubble zone” bylaw banning protests near places of worship, schools and child-care centres.
This election, she ran on a campaign to “build a more affordable, safe and caring city,” promising to keep property taxes at or around the rate of inflation, building more supportive housing and homeless shelters, and protecting public services.
Photo by Laura Proctor / The Local
In a speech conceding to Chow, Bradford, the out-going councillor in Beaches-East York, affirmed that her win was “undisputable,” and informed his supporters that he had called her to congratulate her. “I told her something else,” he said. “I said I want her to succeed, and my supporters, and the nearly 400,000 people that cast a vote for us tonight, they want her to succeed, too. We all do. We all love this city. We know it can be better.”
Chow, too, took a conciliatory tone, signalling a desire to set aside their differences and to represent even her detractors. While some of her supporters booed at the mention of Bradford’s name, Chow said, “Councillor Brad brought new energy and introduced new ideas that people cared about, and made his case for them, and I respect that.”
Now that the election is over, she added, the work of “coming together” begins. “I want to say something to every person in Toronto tonight, whether you voted for me or voted for someone else, whether you thought your voice mattered or wondered if anyone was listening—and especially to the many people who call Toronto home…but could not or did not vote—I am your mayor, too.”
Changes at City Council
There were six new faces elected to city council—Nate Erskine-Smith, Sara Ehrhardt, Diana Chan McNally, Curran Stikus, Chiara Padovani, and Shaun Chen. Additionally, one familiar face, Mike Layton, who previously stepped away from the role, is returning to council.
To run for mayor, Bradford had left an open seat on city council in Beaches-East York. Erskine-Smith, the area’s former Liberal MP, won by a wide margin in that ward, beating out several locally recognized figures, including former CTV news reporter Natalie Johnson and former waterfront parks manager James Dann. Erskine-Smith unsuccessfully sought the Ontario Liberal Party nomination for Scarborough Southwest in a by-election earlier this year.
In Toronto-Danforth,Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustee Sara Ehrhardt takes over the councillor position from Paula Fletcher, whose sudden retirement this summer sparked a flurry of candidates to jump into the race for that ward. Ehrhardt faced off against Mary Fragedakis, a former councillor in the area seeking to reclaim the seat, and Diane Saxe, the out-going councillor of University-Rosedale, who switched wards last-minute after Fletcher announced she would not be seeking re-election.
Saxe’s departure from University-Rosedale allowed her to avoid competing there against Layton, a former councillor in the ward and son of the late federal NDP leader Jack Layton. After stepping back to spend time with his family, Layton will return to city council, having won handily in this election.
In Parkdale-High Park, another wide open race after long-time councillor Gord Perks decided to retire, Diana Chan McNally, a prominent advocate for the unhoused won as city councillor. Chan McNally beat out TDSB trustee Debbie King and Nadia Guerrera, who had the endorsement of former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne.
Among the closely watched ward races, Curran Stikuts, who was endorsed by NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam and the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, won in Toronto Centre, beating incumbent Chris Moise and Daniel Tate, executive director of the controversial advocacy group IntegrityTO.
While incumbents typically have a strong advantage in Toronto, Stikuts’s victory was one of three races in which incumbents were defeated. In their third time facing off against one another, Chiara Padovani unseated Francis Nunziata, the city’s longest serving councillor in York-South Weston. And in Scarborough North, the area’s former Liberal MP Shaun Chen won against incumbent Jamaal Myers and beat Han Dong, a former Liberal MP for Don Valley North. Chen stepped down from his MP role this August, citing lingering health issues from a vehicle accident.
Meanwhile, in another highly monitored race, Parthi Kandavel was re-elected in Scarborough Southwest, winning a rematch against Kevin Rupasinghe by a little more than five percent of the vote. The two had previously run against each other in a tight race in a 2023 by-election. Kandavel is the husband of Toronto District School Board trustee Anu Sriskandarajah. This election, he has been running while the OPP investigates allegations against him, the details of which the police have not revealed. Kandavel has maintained there has been no wrongdoing on his part.
Trustee Races
This year, there were considerably fewer people running for school board trustee than in previous elections, thanks to a provincial takeover of Toronto area school boards and uncertainty over when—or even if—trustees at some boards will be sworn in. Even so, a total of 77 candidates still signed up to run in the TDSB, and 31 in the TCDSB.
As part of the province’s takeover, TDSB trustees were stripped of their roles entirely, while Catholic board trustees were retained to weigh in on denominational issues. According to Global News, a government source confirmed that trustees at the public boards will not be sworn in until their first official meeting, the likelihood of which is uncertain while the board remains under provincial supervision.
This year at the TDSB, the province also nearly halved the number of wards to 12 from its previous 22. Several incumbent trustees were re-elected to that board, including Matias de Dovitiis in Ward 1, Alexis Dawson in Ward 3, Stacey Cline in Ward 6, Deborah Williams in Ward 7, Christopher Mammoliti in Ward 9, and Anu Sriskandarajah in Ward 12.
Newcomers Timothy Ellis won in TDSB Ward 2, Brandon Choi beat incumbent trustee Weidong Pei in Ward 4, Jennifer Volk won in Ward 5, Farzana Rajwani in Ward 8, Karen Emerson in 10, and Ravicha Ravinthiran in Ward 11.
Multiple previous trustees, including longtime trustee Shelley Laskin, either decided not to run this time or ran for city council instead, like Sara Ehrhardt in Toronto-Danforth, Debbie King in Parkdale-High Park, and Zakir Patel in Scarborough-Rouge Park.
At the TCDSB, re-elected incumbents include Markus de Domenico in Ward 2, Ida Li Preti in Ward 3, Teresa Lubinski in Ward 4, Maria Rizzo in Ward 5, Garry Tanuan in Ward 8, and Angela Kennedy in Ward 11. In Wards 6 and 12, the respective incumbents Frank D’Amico and Nancy Crawford were unopposed and thus acclaimed.
Robert Pella won in TCDSB Ward 1, Marissa Largo in Ward 7, Jonathan Santos in Ward 9, and Teresa Colonna in Ward 10.
At the French school boards, which are not under provincial supervision, Anna-Karyna Ruszkowski won in Conseil scolaire Viamonde’s Ward 3 – Centre. Geneviève Oger in Ward 4 and Benoit Fortin in Ward 2 were acclaimed. For the French Catholic board, Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir, Yelena Nichilo won in Ward 3, and Rhea Dechaine won in Ward 4.
Tree of the Year
In the city’s first-ever kids’ vote, the Sugar Maple was elected the clear winner of Toronto’s 2027 Tree of the Year, with 4,549 votes, or 44 percent of total ballots. Red Oak came in second with close to 20 percent, and Basswood third, with 15 percent. According to City data, a total of 10,249 votes were cast.