D-Day in Toronto

As voters head to the polls, observers look back on eight years of Miller, thank Toronto for providing such an entertaining race, and predict a slim win for angry Rob Ford.

Torontonians are currently at the polls to decide the outcome of a municipal election that has captured the city’s attention like no other in decades. The Toronto Star and Toronto Sun have printed the obligatory election day ‘do your duty and vote’ editorials, but voters hardly need prompting: turnout at advance polls was 82 per cent higher than the last election.

Writing from an undisclosed location outside the GTA, the Sun’s Connie Woodcock says the Toronto race has been so entertaining she cares more about it than her own municipal election, and that many Canadians are probably in the same boat.

L. Ian Robinson projects in the Montreal Gazette that although Ford and George Smitherman are tied in the polls, the “fundamentals still favour Ford. His voters are angry, and angry voters are motivated to vote. It's not quite the Tea Party, but it's not far off, either. Smitherman will need a lot of strategic voting to pull it out.”

The Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy speculates support for Ford is probably higher than polls indicate because his backers have been cowed into silence, and that closeted support will push him over the top today. “Why should they come out of the closet, so to speak, when the elitist Lib-left — who feel it is their divine right to control the fiefdom of Toronto — are ready to pounce on them with their tales of the end of the world as we know it should Ford win(?)” she asks.

The Globe and Mail’s Brian Topp writes that, despite prevailing opinion in the papers and the message from the two leading candidates, after eight years under outgoing mayor David Miller “Toronto is doing much better in many ways.” Miller’s main mistake was not having a good enough communications team to show the public all the good he’d done on the files of development, poverty, and balancing the budget. “Mr. Miller is paying the price in the grossly distorted debate about his record during the election to succeed him. In the longer term he will be remembered as a great city builder.”