Olivia Chow won Toronto's mayoralty in a low-turnout by-election with just 260,000 votes, half what the previous mayor got. A fragmented field and vote-splitting helped her, not a surge in socialist support. Voters hoped her left-wing policies would fix housing and wages, but nothing has changed.
Toronto recently, a few years ago, elected a self-described socialist mayor, and this trend of electing far-left or self-described socialists to become mayors of major cities across the Western world is becoming much more common. Why do you think that is?
This is the accidental mayor because she came to power through a by-election in which the incumbent resigned over a sex scandal. So people did elect her because the, the competition was slow out of the gate. The competition was divided, so there was a lot of vote splitting, and there seemed to be a segment of society thinking that a left-wing ideology will help them get a home, will help their wages go up, will give them a better employer and make life better for them. Of course, that has been not the case.
So do you think if it was a normal election, she wouldn't have been elected?
Well, I mean, she's never gotten above about 260,000 votes. Back in the Tory days, he was close to 500,000 in his first election. She just scraped through, really.
And for people that don't know, we're talking about Mayor Olivia Chow, the current mayor of Toronto.
