Dan Carbin is a young(ish) professional who has been actively engaged in politics in three countries for more than two decades. He pays his bills working as a public affairs consultant in Toronto.
For the past three weeks we’ve been bringing you breakdowns of the major Toronto mayoral candidates: John Tory, Doug Ford, and Olivia Chow.
And in 10 days, one of them is going to be Toronto’s new mayor.
Candidates will be focusing over the final week of the campaign on two things: making a final advertising push to sway undecided voters and executing a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) strategy to ensure that identified supporters actually show up to cast their ballot.
In the world of municipal politics, where turnouts of less than 50% are the norm (only 44% of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2010 Toronto election), getting potential supporters to vote is absolutely critical.
A handful of votes in each city ward could be the difference between winning and losing.
One of the factors that makes the final week of modern campaigns so intense is that candidates don’t really have a precise idea of just how well they are doing. While political polls have consistently shown John Tory in the lead, the margin between Tory and second-place Doug Ford has swung quite dramatically between polls.
Political polling in Canada hardly has a sterling reputation for accuracy these days in any case.
Pollsters got it wrong in Alberta in 2012 when they predicted a Wildrose win in the provincial election. They got it wrong again in 2013 when they failed to predict a majority for the BC Liberals. And they were wrong again in the 2014 Ontario election, when many declared the election a complete toss-up between the PCs and Liberals.
In the days leading up to Rob Ford’s landslide election back in 2010, several pollsters declared the race “too close to call” between Ford and George Smitherman.
So the bottom-line is: as a voter, ignore the polls and vote for the candidate who is likely to best represent you at city hall.
As so many of your fellow citizens fail to discharge this basic civic responsibility your vote actually carries more weight and can make a real difference.
Advance polls, free of tedious line-ups, are now open across the city. You can vote until 7pm on October 19th at the designated polling station closest to you.
And since you can find that easily right here, you now have no excuse not to get out and vote.
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