Former NDP MP Olivia Chow is running again for federal politics in Toronto, but the Trinity-Spadina riding she’s won handily before has been redistricted to Spadina-Fort York.
Anticipating Chow’s announcement, Liberal supporters at the Eglinton-Lawrence nomination meeting on Sunday were happy to point out that her mayoral election results in the municipal wards inside Spadina-Fort York won’t necessarily buoy the NDP.
John Tory, they said, actually won or came close in wards she should’ve won easily.
While Chow did the best in downtown wards, and came first in wards 14, 18, and 19, factoring in the federal redistricting borders cuts her vote-share significantly.
Trinity-Spadina, was a long time battleground between the NDP and Liberals, and is currently held by Liberal MP Adam Vaughn. He won it in a byelection last year against one of Chow’s top staff members after Chow had stepped down to run municipally.
The new federal riding cuts across wards 19, 20, 27 and 28 – along with a sliver of Ward 14.
While Chow did the best in downtown wards, and came first in wards 14, 18, and 19, factoring in the federal redistricting borders cuts her vote-share significantly.
An analysis of the election data — looking only at the municipal polling districts that fall into the new federal riding — shows that Tory indeed beat Chow in the area. But not by a landslide.
Vote counts total for Tory at 16,645 and Chow at 12,873. Doug Ford came in distant third at 6,740.
Some polling districts bridge the federal riding’s borders, muddying the results a little. Even with those removed from the total, though, the results don’t change much.
Before we jump to conclusions, a few caveats:
- If media reports from the election are to be believed, many voters turned to Tory purely in an effort to make sure Ford didn’t win.
- City elections often have much less voter interest – often lower than the 50 per cent mark. That said, Toronto’s election turn-out sky-rocketed to 60 per cent in 2014.
- Tory, the former leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party, doesn’t necessarily substitute well for Vaughn.
Also, municipal and federal elections also turn on entirely different issues. No federal candidates, for instance, are campaigning to wage a war on Toronto’s raccoons. Not yet, anyway.
Published in Partnership with iPolitics.ca
