To the Point for the Week of October 18, 2026
We provide an overview and predict a winner of the mayoral races in Ontario’s five largest cities in the final hours of the province’s municipal elections.
ONTARIO MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
The Final Hours
The federal election writ period is at least thirty-six and at most fifty days, while Ontario’s writ period normally lasts twenty-nine. At the municipal level in Ontario, candidates can begin campaigning months before election day. Comparatively speaking, federal and Ontario provincial elections are sprints, while municipal elections are a marathon.
And now, here we are, the final hours of the 2026 municipal elections. This election cycle featured a litany of issues across varying municipalities, including data centres, public safety, housing, infrastructure, and yes, bike lanes. Mayoral races across the province also had varying dynamics, like incumbent mayors fending off challenges from sitting councillors, a former mayor attempting a comeback, and a rematch of a razor-thin 2022 contest. That’s what makes the mayoral races in Ontario’s five largest cities – Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, Brampton and Hamilton – the most critical to watch on Election Day this Monday.
OTTAWA
Ottawa’s incumbent mayor Mark Sutcliffe is up against a divided field in an election that’s been dominated by affordability and OC Transpo’s troubled transit system. Sutcliffe’s chief challenger is veteran councillor Jeff Leiper. Homebuilder Alex Lawson, who prides himself on being the conservative candidate in the field, and economist Neil Saravanamuttoo trail both Leiper and Sutcliffe in a four-way race.
What was an issue in the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election may clinch the election for Sutcliffe. Consolidation around a single candidate to make Sutcliffe hustle for re-election is failing to materialize. While Sutcliffe is not broadly vilified by the electorate, the mixed sentiment about his tenure as Ottawa’s mayor may not be enough for Leiper to unseat him. Only 34% thought Ottawa was heading in the right direction, 15% in the wrong direction, while 48% were neutral. Those numbers do not point to a clear demand for a “change election” in the nation’s capital.
If we were betting on a prediction market like Polymarket or Kalshi, Sutcliffe’s strong support outside the downtown core, across Ottawa’s east, west and rural areas, would be enough for us to put money on him winning.
BRAMPTON
Incumbent Mayor Patrick Brown faces no prominent challenger in his bid for a third term. Eleven candidates are running against him. No city councillors are challenging Brown’s hold on the mayor’s seat at City Hall, and the closest visible challenger to his political hat trick is real estate lawyer Wesley Jackson, who also ran in 2018. That’s essentially it.
Patrick Brown remains dominant in Brampton, and we expect him to win handily. We’ll see if this will be Brown’s last term as mayor before returning to provincial, and perhaps federal, politics once again.
HAMILTON
Just 1,663 votes separated Andrea Horwath and Keanin Loomis in the 2022 Hamilton mayoral race. While that may seem like a lot, it’s actually a slim margin of victory, which left Horwath with little electoral cushion. A narrow victory in 2022 has set up a challenging race for Horwath in 2026.
Hamilton has a three-way race between incumbent Andrea Horwath, lawyer and former Hamilton Chamber of Commerce CEO Keanin Loomis, and Ward 8 city councillor Rob Cooper. One of the biggest issues in the Hammer was affordability and taxes. During this council term, property-tax increases totalled more than 21%. When affordability and cost of living are issues across many municipalities, they’re particularly acute in Hamilton, where Horwath is now promising to keep property-tax increases below inflation. The question for voters in Hamilton is whether the tax increases over four years have delivered the infrastructure and investment promised by Horwath, and whether they’re willing to give her another chance should she keep tax increases below inflation.
On the other hand, Loomis is running on fiscal discipline, while not explicitly promising a tax cut or cap. His promise is to keep taxes “as low as possible” while ensuring core services are properly funded. Unlike Horwath, Loomis is not promising to keep tax increases tied to inflation. He’s also promising “zero-based budgeting” that includes reviewing every city service to justify spending from the ground up, rather than departments relying on previous years’ budgets.
The last public poll on the race in Hamilton was back in July, when Horwath trailed Loomis by almost fourteen points, 38.4% to 24%. Even a fourteen-point margin months before election day was ripe for a tightening as the race progressed, but signals from the ground suggest Horwath is underwater. Our read is that Loomis has reconsolidated his support from 2022, has peeled off enough from Horwath to give his campaign the edge, and has kept Rob Cooper at bay, who’s considered a viable candidate according to The Hamilton Spectator. If Loomis has an efficient get-out-the-vote operation to get his supporters to the polls, we anticipate he will best Horwath and become mayor of Ontario’s fifth-largest city.
MISSISSAUGA
Mississauga appears to be a genuine three-way race between incumbent Carolyn Parrish, former Mississauga mayor turned Ontario Liberal leader and then Mississauga mayoral candidate again Bonnie Crombie, and Ward 2 councillor Alvin Tedjo. The most recent October polls by Liaison Strategies and Abacus Data (the Abacus poll was commissioned by Tedjo’s campaign) have Crombie leading both Tedjo and Parrish, while Tedjo has a slight advantage over Parrish in second place.
Contrary to the polls, our sources have been giving us a wide range of perspectives on where the campaign is right now. Some have said Crombie is a distant third, others say Parrish has a very narrow lead, while others suggest Tedjo is going to upset both Crombie and Parrish.
This might be the most hotly contested campaign in the province, with Parrish and Crombie at times butting heads hard, with smears and insults hurled back and forth at each other in several mayoral debates. And while Tedjo likes to position himself as an alternative to both Crombie and Parrish and is committed to staying “above the fray,” he’s also attacked both of his opponents. He’s attacked Crombie for abandoning the city when she decided to “quit” as mayor to run for the Ontario Liberal leadership and accused Parrish of “hiding behind your desk and from your record of tax increases and rising crime.”
Parrish is offering continuity and a pledge to finish the job on projects and initiatives already underway. The political tension for Crombie and Tedjo is who represents change. Crombie offers a return to familiar leadership. Tedjo is offering a clear alternative to two longtime politicians, having been first elected to council in 2022.
On the surface, this race may be too close to call. However, Tedjo’s late surge may just be enough to best the current and former mayor. We think this will come down to who has the best ground game operation and whose voters are motivated to vote for their preferred candidate.
TORONTO
One could argue that the 2026 Toronto mayoral race has been one of the most interesting in recent cycles. Unlike the by-election in 2023, this race is a true head-to-head battle between Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford. We’ve dedicated several editions of To the Point over the last few months to the race and argued back in June that Bradford’s deficit obscured his potential: the mood of the city favoured his message, and his task was to turn a gradual rise into election-day momentum. On the other hand, Chow’s lead masked her vulnerability: dissatisfaction with her performance and the city’s direction left her exposed to a challenger whose message matched voters’ frustrations around congestion, public safety, and affordability.
The last week of the campaign was very telling. Chow rolled out videos featuring former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, current Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles, and environmentalist David Suzuki to prime her progressive base to get out and vote, driving home the message that Bradford was untrustworthy and electing him would be risky. Bradford set out on a 25-ward campaign blitz beginning on October 19th. The objective: visit every Toronto ward in the final week of the election, taking his message to areas that are not necessarily his strongholds.
Chow’s campaign appears shaky, while Bradford’s is confident and “steady as she goes.” That was quite evident during the CP24 mayoral debate on Thursday, the final debate of the election. Our read was that Chow struggled to defend her record and fend off counterpunches from Bradford. Bradford conducted himself as though he truly believed he was the frontrunner in the race and presented himself as a mayor-in-waiting.
We believe that the polling shifts in the final ten days of the campaign are material and real. The Bradford campaign’s strategy to build gradually and peak on election day has been executed almost flawlessly. To Chow’s credit, she has firmed up her base, and from our first-hand observation, her supporters are highly motivated to stop Brad Bradford. Consequently, the Toronto mayoral race will be decided by which campaign has a highly tuned and well-oiled get-out-the-vote machine. Both campaigns are going to call and knock on doors incessantly until they reach a supporter and confirm they have voted or will go out to vote.
Our final prediction: Brad Bradford squeaks out the narrowest of narrow victories.
Christopher Mourtos, writing on behalf of ONpoint Strategy Group
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