Ontario vote too close to call as parties fight over crucial ridings

Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole poured campaign resources into swing ridings in the Greater Toronto Area, where political observers said tight battles could be a deciding factor.

Although Mr. Trudeau was declared the winner of Monday’s election, results of individual ridings in the GTA were still too close to call at deadline.

Before the polls closed, political observers said Mr. O’Toole’s most likely path to power lay through flipping some of the swing ridings in the suburban “905” belt that surrounds Toronto, which is named for its telephone area code.

While the Liberals won the vast majority of ridings in the 905 in 2019, in some their margins of victory were razor thin. Several were seen by both leading parties as winnable seats, depending on how many voters decided to cast votes with potential spoilers to the left, for the NDP, or to the right, for the populist People’s Party of Canada.

Party leaders naturally made this multicultural middle-class region a priority in the campaign. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who faced anti-vaccine protesters at various Ontario events, including earlier this month in Newmarket-Aurora, north of Toronto, was there again on the campaign’s final weekend, touring a farmer’s market. Mr. O’Toole made several strategic visits to York Region during the campaign, including to Richmond Hill, where his party’s candidate lost by just 212 votes to the Liberals in 2019.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail before the polls closed, Mr. O’Toole’s campaign chairman, Walied Soliman, said the Conservative Leader had achieved his objective in the campaign, whether he wins power, by starting a “dialogue with Canadians.”

Mr. Soliman also said the party’s platform – seen by many as a more centrist document that included a climate-change plan and focused on housing affordability – was not tailored to appeal to key 905 ridings.

“Erin’s platform was not developed through focus groups. Erin’s platform was developed by his deep-seated personal values,” Mr. Soliman said. “And those deep-seated personal values align with middle Canada.”

Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals were also looking to maintain their stronghold in Toronto itself, after the party won all the city’s ridings, most by wide margins, in 2019.

However, the party’s hopes dipped in Spadina-Fort York in recent days after the Liberal Party said it would remove candidate Kevin Vuong after a dropped sexual-assault charge against him was revealed. The party said Mr. Vuong would not be a member of caucus should he be elected; his name remained on the ballot because the deadline to remove candidates had passed. Mr. Vuong has said the allegations are false.

Breaking the Liberals’ grip on Toronto was also a key priority for the NDP, which was shut out of the city in 2019.

Jagmeet Singh began his party’s campaign in former NDP leader Jack Layton’s old riding of Toronto-Danforth, where candidate Clare Hacksel, executive director of an abortion clinic, faced off against incumbent Liberal Julie Dabrusin. In 2019, Ms. Dabrusin won by 14 percentage points. NDP strategists had also targeted the Toronto riding of Davenport, where the party came within 1,500 votes of the Liberals last time.

A recent opinion poll found affordable housing was the most important issue facing the GTA, with 32 per cent of respondents mentioning the topic unprompted, followed by COVID-19 related issues, at 18 per cent, and transit, at 14 per cent.

The survey was conducted by Nanos Research for CTV News and CP24 between Sept. 11 and 13 and had a sample size of 488 people. It has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

As well, another recent poll found the Liberals had a 20-point lead in the seat-rich GTA, standing at 47 per cent compared with the Conservatives’ 27 per cent. The NDP were at 18 per cent, the People’s Party at 6 per cent and the Greens at 2 per cent, the survey found.

The survey was conducted by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail and CTV. The poll was conducted from Sept. 10 to 14 and had a sample size of 261 people. It has a margin of error of 6.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.