Did a bit of a breakdown of Urban/Suburban voting tendencies, turnouts, etc from the last two elections (since the data was available). I divided up the results by ward and sorted them by downtown and surburban wards making Eglinton, the Humber River, The lake and Vic Park the boundaries. This provided 15 downtown wards and 29 suburban wards. Obviously this isn't perfect because someone who lives on the north side of Eglinton would be a suburbanite while their neighbour across the street would be downtown, but that's ok. (Note that for 2003, because they didn't include the 'total' for each ward I didn't take the time to add up all the "others", so the results maybe off by a percent or two)
2003
Downtown
% of pop. turnout: 31.26%, % of total voters: 38%
Voted for - Miller: 56.7%, Hall: 9.25%, Tory/Nunziata: 34.05%
Suburban
% of pop. turnout: 24.57%, % of total voters: 62%
Voted for - Miller: 38.14%, Hall: 10.37%, Tory/Nunziata: 51.49%
2006
Downtown
% of pop. turnout: 26.10%, % of total voters: 36%
Voted for - Miller: 64.55%, Pitfield: 27.1%, other: 8.35%
Suburban
% of pop. turnout: 22.40%, % of total voters: 64%
Voted for - Miller: 52.72%, Pitfield: 35.25% , other: 12.03%
So what does this tell us? I think it says a few things (some of which are common sense):
1. In a seemingly close election, downtown voters turn out in proportionally greater numbers (though both areas increased by 40,000 voters). If Ford is perceived as the favourite to win, the downtown will come out in even greater droves than it did in 2003, I think.
2. In the absence of a "centre" candidate like in 2006, centre voters are probably more more likely to vote for the left wing candidate (perhaps it's just a coincidence that Hall + Miller = Miller 2006, but unless all those voters simply didn't show up, accounting for the lower turnout substantially more of them probably voted for Miller). This, to me, means that those Hall voters would go to Smitherman or Pantalone before Rossi (and certainly before Ford)
3. In an election where there is both a moderate and heavily right leaning conservative (Tory/Nunziata), 2 out of 5 suburban voters still voted for Miller. Perhaps some were more anti-Tory than pro-Miller, but that somehow seems doubtful since Tory wasn't the "bad guy" in the election. Both candidates were high quality.
4. Even though I haven't displayed the stats here (I certainly can provide my messy excel file to anyone who wants to see it), there's a fairly strong correlation between the beliefs of who Downtown voters elect as their Mayor and who they elect as their Councillor, while in the suburbs it's somewhat random. To give an example, 52% of people in Ford's ward voted for Miller in 2006. This also potentially shows just how strong incumbency is as well (there's been numerous studies on municipal elections being overwhelmingly favourable to the incumbent). This suggests that the only real opportunities for change within council are in those wards where the councillor is not returning. So, simply because someone might vote for a right leaning candidate for mayor, this will probably not impact who they vote for as councillor.
5. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even in an extremely competitive election such as in 2003, only 1/4th of suburban people voted. This is why I don't think Ford is going to obtain 35% of the vote. He would need approximately 250,000 votes to get that number. If we assume Ford's downtown support is probably at Nunziata levels or at best only slightly better (I'd say that's not far off) and Nunziata received 6800 votes downtown, Ford would need to win 61% of all of the votes in the suburbs to reach 35% support across the city. Considering in 2003, 38% of suburban voters voted for Miller, and another 10% voted for Hall, you can probably infer that almost 50% of the suburbs would not vote for Ford. There's no way anyone swings that violently to the right, especially with 5 candidates to choose from.
Based on these stats, I don't know how Ford wins unless there's an even split across the board. Even if we gave Ford half of the suburban vote (which seems unlikely), that's only 31% across the city. Realistically, I bet he pulls in high 20s, but I don't think that's enough once the downtown decides who its candidate of choice will be (smitherman or Pantalone). I actually think that if Miller comes out at the right time with an endorsement of Pantalone, and if he can get some good press, Pantalone might come out on top.
