Less than half of Toronto residents approve of Mayor Olivia Chow's performance: poll

Less than half of Toronto residents approve of Mayor Olivia Chow’s performance, according to a new poll. The Leger survey asked Toronto residents about their mayor as part of a broader poll on Ontario politics. Respondents were almost evenly split over Chow’s handling of municipal affairs as she nears the end of her second year at the helm of Canada’s largest city. Slightly less than half (48 per cent) of people strongly or somewhat approved of her performance, while 42 per cent said they strongly or somewhat disapproved. Another 10 per cent said they were not sure. “Torontonians are on the fence about Mayor Chow,” Leger senior vice-president Jennifer McLeod Macey told National Post in an email. “While the proportion that approve is nominally higher than those that disapprove, approval is soft. Indeed, almost twice as many strongly disapprove as strongly approve.” The poll found that 17 per cent strongly disapprove of Chow’s performance, while only 10 per cent said they strongly approve. Macey said that the market research company “didn’t have the opportunity to probe on the ‘Why?’” in the latest survey, but she was interested in “digging deeper into municipal issues, such as taxes, crime and safety, affordable housing, and transit which are all undoubtably having an impact on public opinion.” She found little “variance” among different demographics in terms of Chow’s approval rating, but pointed to “more uncertainty among women and young-middle-aged adults.” Whereas just six per cent of male respondents were unsure of Chow’s job performance, 15 per cent of women were. A similar number of 18 to 34 year olds (14 per cent) and 35 to 54 year olds (15 per cent) were on the fence about Chow’s performance as mayor. Greater communication “on key issues could have a significant impact on overall approval ratings,” Macey said. Chow was elected in July 2023 following the resignation of John Tory over an affair with a political staffer 38 years younger than him. She had previously run for the post in 2014, placing third behind Doug Ford, who went on to become premier of Ontario, and Tory, who became mayor. Months after she was elected, Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Chow has been criticized by some city councillors for failing to protect Toronto’s Jewish community. Beaches-East York Councillor Brad Bradford accused Chow of dragging her feet on municipal initiatives to protect local places of worship, notably synagogues that have been picketed by anti-Israel protesters. “In the fifteen months since October 7, an absence of leadership has turned Toronto into a city that many don’t recognize,” Bradford wrote in National Post earlier this year. “This is not a Jewish problem — it’s a Toronto problem. This is about our values and who we want to be as a city. Unfortunately, as we enter 2025, this crisis has been met with a lack of leadership at the highest level.” Last week, news reports suggested that Bradford is aiming to run in the upcoming mayoral election scheduled for late October 2026. Marco Mendicino, a former Liberal cabinet minister and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s current chief of staff, is also reportedly considering a run for mayor. When Chow entered office, she boasted a 73 per cent approval rating, according to a poll conducted by Liaison Strategies. However, since then, Chow has seen her approval rating steadily decline. By May 2024, her approval rating had dropped to 52 per cent, according to another Liaison Strategies survey. It went back up to 59 per cent in July, around her one-year anniversary, but it had dropped again to 54 per cent as of November 2024. Over the same time period, her disapproval rating has gone from 18 per cent at the time of her election, to a high of 40 per cent last May, and was sitting at 38 per cent in November. In the May 2024 Liason Strategies survey, Chow’s support was strongest in Toronto’s downtown core and weakest in the city’s farthest reaches, such as Etobicoke. The poll also found that women in the city were slightly more likely to support Chow (58 per cent) than men (50 per cent). Chow inherited a roughly $1 billion budget deficit — a holdover from a pandemic-era shortfall in transit revenue and rising shelter costs — and has struggled to trim expenses. In January, she unveiled the city’s new budget featuring a nearly seven per cent tax hike , estimated to cost Toronto homeowners $268 a year. In May, Chow acknowledged the city would require assistance meeting its roughly $40 million goal to fund its share of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which includes six games scheduled to take place in Toronto. “We can’t go and find any more cash, we just don’t have it,” the mayor said during a press conference last month. The Leger survey was conducted between May 23 and 25, with an online sample of 1,025 Ontarians, of which 296 were Toronto metropolitan residents. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes.

• Chris Selley: Olivia Chow risks uniting Torontonians in disappointment
• Brad Bradford: Bylaw protecting Toronto Jewish neighbourhoods in the works, no thanks to Chow