Get Ready For "Toryonto" Puns

Many people are looking at the polls in Toronto's mayoral race and wondering what is going on with Doug Ford staying close to the lead. Urban Studies Professor Richard Florida has been asking a further question: Is Toronto really as conservative as the polls seem to show.  John Tory is leading, and he is about as conservative as the Fords. Essentially, he is Rob Ford without the crack. Or the bigotry. Or the shamelessness, public drunkenness, bullying, or drunk and distracted driving. The point is that all told, about three-quarters of Torontonians are intending to vote for a highly conservative candidate.

It would be easy to discount Florida's questions as those of someone who can't accept that his own views aren't as popular as he'd like. But he does have a valid point that these polls are very unusual compared to any other North American city. All other large cities are more liberal than the areas around them, yet the choice of candidates here would indicate that Toronto is much more conservative than Canada as a whole.

But I think there are some good explanations for the polling:

• There's probably a sizeable Anybody-But-Ford sentiment in Toronto. So a lot of people planning on voting for Tory may be doing so only to keep Ford out of office. My own politics are closer to those of Olivia Chow, but if I lived in Toronto, I'd be seriously considering voting for Tory.
• The Fords have been the focus of the election all along. When that happens other candidates don't get the close inspection a major politician usually gets. It's entirely possible that many Tory supporters don't know much about the mild-mannered candidate's platform.
• It's naive to believe that all Ford's supporters are attached to conservative ideals. The Fords are populists, and people are drawn to populists not for politics, but for personal connection to the candidate.
• Thanks to amalgamation, Toronto includes a lot of its suburbs.  In most big Canadian or American cities, the itself is just the urban bit in the middle.  The suburbs - which may make up most of the population - are different political entities.  As Mike Harris showed, the suburban and satellite populations can get really enthusiastic for conservative economics.
• Expanding on that, the fact that Toronto has been amalgamated for a while now has caused some resentment and tension between its urban and suburban aspects. Probably a lot of people who normally would consider candidates from the middle of the spectrum are looking for some political vengeance.