Olivia Chow is projected to be re-elected as mayor of Toronto, securing a comfortable victory against rival Brad Bradford.

Chow won 54.1 percent of the vote, with 1,405 out of 1,431 polls reporting, edging ahead of Bradford’s 41.1 percent.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Bradford had managed to narrow what had started out as a wide gap between himself and Chow. Chow’s win signals continued public support for the more progressive direction she’s taken since she was first elected mayor in 2023.

Although Chow enjoyed a considerable lead early in the campaign period, polls showed she and Bradford were running neck and neck by the final days. 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, earned 0.82 percent of the vote, as the count continued.

Back in 2023, Chow 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 came in eighth place, with just 1.28 percent of the votes.

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 TTC new fare-capping system.

But she’s also received criticism, including from progressive Torontonians, for voting in favour of a “bubble zone” bylaw restricting protests near places of worship, schools and child-care centres.

This year, she’s run 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.

More to come…