Éric Blais: Toronto’s mayoral race was close in the polls. Voters made sure it wasn’t - Toronto Star

The polls told Toronto the race was close. Toronto made sure it wasn’t.

A person enters the polling station at the St. Lawrence Mark North building on election day in Toronto on Monday.

Éric Blais is president of Headspace Marketing in Toronto and the author of "Normal Nation: How Normalcy Could Play in a Third Québec Referendum."

Days before Monday’s municipal election, a card from mayoral candidate Brad Bradford landed in my mailbox. The back laid out his plan to make life more affordable. The front ended with this line: “Change is within our grasp. That’s why I’m running to be your Mayor.”

With polls showing him ahead at the time, the call to action also read like a report on the odds.

Bradford had reason to believe the numbers. Mainstreet Research had him at 48.9 per cent among decided voters to incumbent Mayor Olivia Chow’s 47.5. Build Canada had him up four. The headlines called it a deadlock.

Chow won by 13 points. All seven final polls underestimated her and three had Bradford in front.

It’s easy to say the pollsters blew it. Some may have. Pollara, polling around the same time, had Chow up 11, so methodology clearly mattered. But I suspect the more interesting story is that the polls did more than just measure the race. They changed it.

Part of the reason is that the two campaigns gave the polls little competition. Chow’s website promised “a more affordable, safe and caring city.” Bradford’s promised “a safer, more affordable, and thriving city.”

Mayorald candidate Brad Bradford at a media availability on the morning of election day at Zaffron Restaurant in North York on Monday.

The real choice, a city that cares versus a city that thrives, was hiding in the last adjective. Everything before it was the same reshuffled formula. This sameness may have made the horse race itself the most striking message voters heard.

Look at turnout. About 46 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot on Monday, up from fewer than 1-in-3 in 2022. That’s the highest since 2014 and roughly what Ontario managed in last year’s provincial election. Chow drew more than 532,000 votes, a record for a Toronto mayoral candidate. Even in defeat, Bradford won more votes than John Tory needed to win in 2022.

Why? A close race raises the stakes, though perhaps not in the way we assume. When American economists showed voters polls saying a race was close, the voters believed them and still voted no more than anyone else. The people who do react to a close poll are the ones whose job is to get voters out.

That’s where Chow had the edge. No Toronto mayor has lost re-election since amalgamation in 1998. On election morning, John Tory, who knows a thing or two about winning here, told CP24 that a sitting mayor in danger was “unusual.”

Local voters, he said, “get comfortable with a person and… unless you’ve made a terrible mistake… they tend to re-elect you.” Tory also noted that Chow had “more machinery, including some of the union people, to help her get the vote out.”

Mayor Olivia Chow addresses the media at Riverdale Park East on the morning of election day in Toronto.

When polls and the headlines they generate tell that kind of machine its candidate might lose, it goes to work. By every sign, Chow’s did.

Which brings me back to that card. “Within our grasp” was written for Bradford’s voters, but it also reached Chow’s people. Every poll showing him ahead worked, in effect, as a get-out-the-vote reminder for the other side.

Sociologists call this the self-defeating prophecy. It’s a prediction that, once announced, prevents the predicted outcome from happening.

None of this proves the polls handed Chow her margin. Ward-by-ward results will tell us more about who turned out and where. But it should give everyone pause. Pollsters like to say a poll is a snapshot, not a forecast. In a close race, a public poll is also a message that reaches everyone, with unpredictable effects.

Campaigns know this about their ads. They might remember it about their polls. Tell your supporters victory is within reach, and your opponents’ organizers hear it too.

The polls told Toronto the race was close. Toronto made sure it wasn’t.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Éric Blais is president of Headspace Marketing in Toronto and the author of "Normal Nation: How Normalcy Could Play in a Third Québec Referendum."