MAYOR OLIVIA CHOW — After nearly a decade and a half of right-of-center mayors — JOHN TORY and ROB FORD — voters in Toronto sided Monday with a former city councillor and NDP MP. With a little more than 37 percent of the vote, Chow finished five points ahead of challenger and former deputy mayor ANA BAILÃO. All other candidates in the race — there were more than 100 — finished in single digits. — Heavy favorite: During the campaign, five polling firms released numbers that showed Chow ahead. In early June, polling averages gave her a 20-point lead over her closest rivals. — Drama in the home stretch: Polls, notably from Mainstreet Research, suggested Bailão was surging at the expense of such contenders as MARK SAUNDERS and ANTHONY FUREY. Late in the campaign, Bailão picked up endorsements from former mayor Tory and the Toronto Star editorial board. — Onwards: Ontario Premier DOUG FORD, on the record during the campaign warning that Chow would be a “disaster for Toronto,” offered congrats last night in a written statement. “While we’re not always going to agree on everything, what we can agree on is our shared commitment to making Toronto a place where business, families, and workers can thrive,'' he said. — The big picture: Canada’s two most populous cities are now led by progressive-leaning women — Chow in Toronto and VALÉRIE PLANTE in Montreal. — What’s next: Chow faces plenty of challenges, but has the luxury of time — the current city council term only ends in 2026. BY THE NUMBERS 101: Number of rivals Chow defeated in the race. 37.2: Her share of the vote, the lowest in Toronto’s modern history. 30,000: Number of votes that put her over the top. 1985: The year Chow was elected as a Toronto school board trustee. 3: Her place in the race when she ran for mayor in 2014. 9: The number of years she served as the MP for Trinity-Spadina. 1957: The year Chow was born. 1970: The year she arrived in Canada from Hong Kong at the age of 13. $1 billion: The size of the budget shortfall Chow inherits at city hall. 26-10-2026: The date of the next municipal elections in Toronto. WHO SAID WHAT — Here are some highlights from the overnight analysis: SHAWN JEFFORDS, CBC News: Call it name recognition, or celebrity, or just plain being known by Torontonians, Chow came in as the frontrunner and never relinquished that status. Even in the hectic final days of the campaign, which saw Tory endorse Bailão and Ontario Premier DOUG FORD throw his might behind MARK SAUNDERS, Chow stuck to her plan. EDWARD KEENAN, The Toronto Star: Now, after her long career mostly served in opposition, Chow gets to lead. That’s something different. And she is something different. You can rack up the lists of firsts and firsts-in-a-long-time she represents: Chow becomes the first woman to lead Toronto’s post-amalgamation “megacity” government (and the third in Toronto’s overall history), the first person of color to ever serve as Toronto mayor, the first person born outside North America to serve in that job since the 1950s. KUNAL CHAUDHARY, The Breach: She is Toronto’s first progressive-aligned mayor since DAVID MILLER left office in 2010. Since then, the city has endured more than a decade of austerity measures and soaring unaffordability under the successive tenures of ROB FORD and JOHN TORY. Coupled with a sobering billion-dollar shortfall in the budget due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Chow faces the daunting task of repairing the battered city Tory left behind while executing her vision to make Toronto “more caring, affordable, and safer” for all. JOHN MICHAEL MCGRATH, TVO: Pundit accountability, here: I thought this was a foolish plan and was quite certain that Chow was being set up for another humiliating defeat (not unlike what happened with her 2014 run) by people who didn’t have her best interests in mind. I was wrong, though not because Chow is set to exceed expectations, but because her rivals have so massively underperformed. MARCUS GEE, The Globe and Mail: Chow is about to assume one of the most important posts in Canadian politics. It is an extraordinary moment in an extraordinary Canadian life. Whether she will be an extraordinary mayor of course remains to be seen. She has spent her political life in opposition, so her skill as an elected executive is untested. | 
