Canadian federal election results in Suburban Toronto

This is page shows results of Canadian federal elections in the outer parts of Toronto—the area that was the suburban portion of Metro Toronto prior to the 1998 merger.

Regional profile

This region was largely rural until the 1960s, and its then three ridings usually supported the Progressive Conservatives. In the 1960s and 1970s as it urbanized and its number of seats gradually doubled to seven, it solidly supported the Liberals (Grits) and even gave the New Democratic Party two seats in 1972's tight election. From 1979 until the 1990s its seat split reflected but slightly exaggerated the national result between the Grits and Tories, with the NDP usually shut out.

By the 1990s, with the large proportion of immigrants in the region and urban growth increasing the region's seats to 13, suburban Toronto, like Ontario as a whole, swung hard to the Liberals. For two decades, suburban Ontario was the Liberals' power base; from 1993 to 2008, Liberal candidates swept the region, making this region to the Liberals what Rural Alberta was to the Conservatives. In some ridings, the Liberals defeated their closest opponents by margins of 3-1 or more. The NDP had a few pockets of support, as they did in all of southern Ontario. The Conservatives didn't even register on the radar screen at first; the centre-right had been more or less nonexistent in the former Metro Toronto since the Tories lost all of their seats here in 1993. Even when the Conservatives won minority governments in 2006 and 2008, they were completely shut out in Toronto.

This changed in 2011, when a slight uptick in Conservative support, combined with vote splitting between the Liberals, NDP and Greens allowed the Conservatives to take six seats in the region - including Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's Etobicoke—Lakeshore riding, albeit in most cases by narrow margins (as few as 26 votes in one riding). Meanwhile, the national surge of NDP support allowed them to take two in eastern Toronto. However, even though the Liberals only had four of the now 12 seats (reduced from 13 due to population growth elsewhere in Southern Ontario) the Liberals led slightly in terms of popular vote.

The region reverted to form in 2015, as a massive surge in Liberal support allowed the Liberals to win all 14 seats (increased due to intensification, particularly in North York Centre) here en route to taking all of Toronto. In all but one seat (York Centre), the Liberals won by 5,500 or more votes.