Olivia Chow would easily win re-election unless John Tory enters race, new poll suggests

CTV News

a day ago

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks during a panel at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Ottawa on Friday, May 30, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Olivia Chow would comfortably secure a second term as Toronto's mayor if an election were held today but she could face a significant challenge from John Tory if he enters the race, a new poll conducted by Liaison Strategies for the Toronto Star has found.
Liaison Strategies surveyed 1,000 Torontonians on their voting intentions, with the next municipal election still nearly 16 months away in October, 2026.
It found that in the event that an election were held today, Chow would have the support of 41 per cent of all voters and 49 per cent of decided voters. That would give her a sizeable double-digit lead over her next closest competitor.
However, in the event that John Tory were to enter the race, Chow's support would drop to 34 per cent among all voters and 39 per cent among decided voters. In that scenario, Tory would be her clear challenger with the support of 31 per cent of all voters and 35 per cent of decided voters.
'If John Tory doesn't run we see that one out of five people who say they would vote for him say that they would (instead) vote for Olivia Chow, so there is a lot of overlap between the two of them, even though you may not think that would be the case' David Valentin of Liaison Strategies told CP24 Breakfast on Monday morning.
The release of the Liaison Strategies survey comes after Chow marked the second anniversary of her win in a mayoral byelection that followed Tory's sudden resignation.
So far few people have stepped forward to indicate an intention to run in the next municipal election, so Liaison Strategies opted to ask Torontonians about the candidacy of several rumoured and former mayoral candidates.
In a race without Tory, Chow's next closest competitor would be Coun. Brad Bradford (16 per cent of all voters, 19 per cent of decided voters) and former deputy mayor Ana Bailao (11 per cent of all voters and 13 per cent of decided voters), both of whom ran in the mayoral byelection.
Former mayoral candidate Anthony Furey was in fourth with the support of 10 per cent of all voters and 12 per cent of decided voters while former Liberal MP Marco Mendicino was a distant fifth with the support of three per cent of all voters and four per cent of decided voters.
About 16 per cent of respondents said that they were still undecided on who they would vote for.
If Tory were to run, Liaison Strategies found that it would essentially become a two-horse race with no other candidate garnering the support of more than seven per cent of decided voters.
In that scenario, 12 per cent of voters identified themselves as undecided.
'There are people who want him (Tory) to come back. Ultimately you are talking about someone who has very high name recognition in a level of politics where name recognition is everything,' Valentin said.
The Toronto Star reported in June that multiple sources close to Tory believed that he was considering a run for mayor.
However, Tory told NewsTalk 1010 days later that he had no immediate plans to run.
'I don't have any plans to run for mayor right now,' Tory said at the time. 'The election is 16 months away. I've got a lot to think about, but I'm just going on with my life, trying to help the city the ways that I did before I was mayor and the way I have done after.'
The Liaison Strategies survey found that a slight majority of Torontonians (51 per cent) approve of the job Chow is doing as mayor.
That approval rating, however, is the lowest that Chow has recorded since entering office and marks a drop from December when 60 per cent of Torontonians approved of the job she was doing, according to Liaison Strategies.
Asked about the numbers during a media availability on Monday to launch a pilot project to provide air conditioning units to seniors, Chow declined to comment.
'There is so much work that needs to be done in so many areas and I am not at all thinking about elections, re-elections, I am trying to find more money to buy more of these air condition units,' she said.
The survey was conducted from July 2-6 using interactive voice response technology and is considered accurate to withing 3.09 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.