Toronto voters gave Mayor Olivia Chow a second term on Monday, re-electing her with a majority of the vote in a race that had tightened to a near-tie in its final weeks. The final unofficial count put Chow at 532,201 votes — 54.2 percent — against 404,013 votes, or 41.1 percent, for city councillor Brad Bradford, a margin of 128,188 votes in a field of 52 candidates, with turnout at 45.84 percent. Broadcasters projected her victory while ballots were still being counted; with 98.4 percent of polls reporting, her lead stood at 125,367 votes. It is Chow's first full four-year term: her first stint at city hall came through the 2023 by-election held after John Tory's resignation and lasted a truncated three years.
At her campaign watch party — held at the same west-end venue where she celebrated her 2023 victory — the room erupted into chants of "Olivia" as television broadcasters called the election. The double-digit result landed harder than the closing polls had suggested: some mid-October surveys had Bradford narrowly in front, and although the final polls restored Chow to a high-single-digit lead, her own campaign spent the last days warning supporters the contest would be neck and neck. On the night, it was not close.
Bradford conceded defeat and congratulated Chow, and his words left no room for argument. "The people of Toronto have spoken and they have decided that she will be returning to the mayor's office. She is the mayor of the city. Nobody can doubt that, it's undisputable and she has my good wishes," he told his supporters. Bradford said he had spoken with Chow by phone shortly after it became clear she would be re-elected. "I said I want her to succeed, and my supporters … they want her to succeed too, they all do, because we all love this city, we know it can be better, and we have to come together to make that happen," he said. "This is not the result that we were hoping for tonight … but I also have this feeling … of immense gratitude for the opportunity to put our ideas forward, our vision of a better Toronto." The loss closes a remarkable climb and a hard landing: Bradford finished eighth in the 2023 by-election with just over 9,200 votes, and reporting indicates the defeat also puts him outside council politics for the first time since he was first elected in 2018.
Chow answered in the same spirit. "The people of Toronto have spoken," she said in her victory speech. "I am grateful, I am humble and I am so proud of our city. What an election, it was a hard-fought election." She thanked Bradford directly: "We had our differences, we fought hard. Councillor Bradford brought new energy and introduced new ideas that people cared about and made his case for them and I respect that. I know we share a love for Toronto and our belief in its future." And she addressed the whole city, not just her voters: "Every person who calls Toronto home, whatever your background, whatever you believe, whoever you love, wherever you live — I will listen to you. I will stand up for you, and I will work every day to earn your trust, because that's what being mayor means to me — it means serving everyone."
The result capped a campaign that turned into a genuine contest late. Chow led through the summer and early fall, but Bradford slowly cut into a deficit that reached as much as 17 points in September, campaigning on a one-year property tax freeze, cutting the land transfer tax on homes under $1.1 million, free transit rides when a vehicle runs more than 15 minutes late, 1,000 new police officers over four years and a 25 percent cut to water bills. His numbers jumped when former federal cabinet minister Chris Alexander dropped out of the race on October 6, consolidating the anti-Chow vote into a head-to-head fight. Chow, who had framed the choice as moving forward or going "backwards to those bad old days where things are falling apart," spent election day itself warning that "the race is close — your vote will decide it."
On the issues, Bradford cast Chow as out of touch with a city anxious about affordability, crime, transit safety and traffic congestion. "This city is stuck," he said. "We're stuck in traffic, we're stuck waiting for the bus that doesn't show up, we're stuck feeling less safe. We're stuck paying more and getting less." Chow ran on her record — the deal uploading the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway costs to the province, tighter rules against bad-faith evictions and reduced 911 wait times — and attacked Bradford's plan to turn Toronto Water into a public agency as a door to privatization: "It's a scheme that no one is asking for." Bradford accused her of fearmongering and noted that provincial law bars private investment in such a corporation.
For ordinary Toronto residents, the second term now gets judged on a specific set of promises. Chow pledged to hold property tax increases at around the rate of inflation — a smaller bill than a freeze would have given homeowners in year one, but one she argued protects the services Bradford's math would have cut. Regular transit riders were promised a fare freeze and a cap that makes rides free after ten paid trips in a week. Renters were put at the centre of her pitch: 10,000 additional rental homes, more supportive housing and shelters, tougher action on bad landlords, and a December motion to kickstart the next round of her rental housing incentive program. Families were promised an expanded school food program. None of that is delivered yet — those are her stated commitments, and the next four years will test them against the same cost-of-living pressures that made this race close. Council meets in November to swear in the winners; the real business begins in December.
Chow closed her night by returning to her own story. Born in Hong Kong, she arrived in Toronto with her parents at 13. "Toronto gave us a home, a place to begin again, a place where an immigrant kid from St. James Town could grow up to become your mayor — and I've never forgotten that," she said. "I am still that immigrant kid who was born somewhere else and calls Toronto home." Her first term governed through a turbulent stretch for the city, including the trade fight with the United States, during which she and Premier Doug Ford publicly worked in what she called a "team Canada approach." She now holds the job with something she never had after 2023, when she won a crowded by-election with 37 percent: an outright majority, a full four-year mandate, and an opponent who has already told the city, in his own words, that nobody can doubt she is its mayor.
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