These are the top 10 ridings to watch in the Greater Toronto Area

CANADA ELECTION | top out 10 Toronto and GTA ridings to watch over

If deutschmark Carney is to top his Liberal Party to its fourth straight term in government, seats in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area will form the backbone of his win.

There are 55 ridings up for grabs between the 416 and 905, home to an estimated 4.5 million eligible voters.

Toronto and the GTA have been dominated by the Liberals in every election since 2015. Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party will need to chip away at that dominance to have any hope of winning enough seats nationwide to form government.

The New Democrats haven't won in Toronto since 2011 and haven't won a single seat in the suburban cities of the GTA since 1990, in a byelection in Oshawa.

Here are the 10 ridings to watch in Toronto and the GTA that will give you the best sense of how the major parties are doing on election night.

The Liberals have swept every seat in Toronto in every general election since 2015. So when the Conservatives took this longtime Liberal stronghold in the heart of the city in a byelection last June by a little more than 600 votes, it was seen by many as a sign of how deeply Justin Trudeau's popularity had sunk. 

The race on Monday is a rematch of the byelection, with Leslie Church, a former top aide to then-minister of finance Chrystia Freeland, trying to take Toronto—St. Paul's back for the Liberals from the Conservative incumbent Don Stewart. 

Also on the ballot: Joseph Frasca (PPC), David Gershuny (Marxist-Leninist), Bruce Levy (NDP), Shane Philips (Green), Cynthia Valdron (Canadian Future).

This riding is the canary in the coal mine for the Conservatives' hopes to make gains in the 905. In the last election, it's where the Liberals had their slimmest margin of victory in the entire region, just 1,460 votes or about 3.2 percentage points. If the Conservatives can't flip this seat, it's hard to see how they can pick up other ridings in the 905 that the Liberals took by wider margins.

Liberal incumbent Leah Taylor Roy is seeking re-election. Her Conservative opponent Costas Menegakis served as a one-term MP for Richmond Hill, winning his seat in 2011 when Stephen Harper's party formed a majority government. 

Other candidates: Danielle Maniuk (NDP), Tom Muench (Green), Igor Tvorogov (PPC).  

This new riding looks to be a litmus test for the fortunes of the Conservatives and Liberals in the 905. When you take the results of the 2021 election from the portions of the old ridings that form its new boundaries, the Liberals' edge over the Conservatives here would have been less than half a percentage point. 

To underscore its importance as a battleground, Milton East—Halton Hills South is one of only a handful of ridings nationwide that both Carney and Poilievre visited during the five-week campaign. 

Conservative candidate Parm Gill was a one-term MP for a riding in Brampton, then represented Milton in the Ontario legislature and served as a cabinet minister in Doug Ford's provincial government. Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen is a lawyer and two-term town councillor in Milton. She ran in February's provincial election but lost to the Ontario PC incumbent by about 2,500 votes. 

Other candidates: Susan Doyle (Green), Walter J. Hofman (PPC), Shahbaz Mahmood Khan (independent), Muhammad Riaz Sahi (NDP).

This is precisely the kind of riding the Liberals will need to pick up if they are to form a majority government. Conservative Anna Roberts took it in 2021 from the two-term Liberal Deb Schulte in one of the tightest races in the province (a margin of little more than 1,000 votes).

Roberts, a longtime community volunteer before she entered politics, is trying to hold on to King—Vaughan for the Conservatives. The Liberal candidate is Mubarak Ahmed, an engineer with experience in business development and project management. 

Other candidates: Ann Raney (Green), Vageesh Sabharwal (PPC), Samantha Sanchez (NDP).

In February, Vince Gasparro came within 200 votes of picking up this seat for the Ontario Liberal Party in the provincial election. He's now trying to win it for the federal Liberals. Gasparro served as a senior advisor to then-mayor of Toronto John Tory, and once dated Jenni Byrne, the senior Conservative strategist who's running the Poilievre campaign. 

The Conservative candidate is Karen Stintz, longtime city councillor and former chair of the TTC board when Rob Ford was mayor. This riding went Conservative in the Harper majority of 2011, when Joe Oliver won it by more than 4,000 votes. 

Other candidates: Wayne Chechuevskiy (Green), Timothy Gleeson (PPC), Allison Tanzola (NDP). 

The New Democrats haven't won in the 416 since 2011, when Toronto's Jack Layton led the party to official opposition status. 

With the NDP struggling to compete nationally this election, its best hope in Toronto could be in this newly renamed riding in the city's west end. The New Democrats came within 1,700 votes of taking this seat in the last election, and this time the three-term Liberal incumbent Arif Virani chose not to run again.

The NDP candidate is the former member of the provincial legislature, Bhutila Karpoche. The Liberal candidate is Karim Bardeesy, whose resume includes a senior advisory post with former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. 

Other candidates: Edward Fraser (Animal Protection), Lorne Gershuny (Marxist-Leninist), Anna Gorka (Green), Wladyslaw Lizon (Conservative), Terry Parker (Marijuana), Rimmy Riarh (Communist).

This riding made national news for several days running early on in the campaign, when it emerged that the Liberal incumbent Paul Chiang had suggested people should turn in a Conservative candidate to the Chinese consulate to collect a bounty. Initially, Carney stood by Chiang, but on March 31 he withdrew from the race.

Replacing Chiang on the ballot for the Liberals is Peter Yuen, a former deputy chief of the Toronto Police Service. The Conservative candidate Michael Ma has a fascinating life story of overcoming tragedy. When he was 12, his father was killed by a drunk driver just two months after immigrating to Canada. Ma later went on to build a career as a senior corporate executive.

More than 50 per cent of residents of Markham—Unionville have Cantonese or Mandarin as their mother tongue, according to census data. 

Other candidates: Elvin Kao (Green), Sameer Qureshi (NDP).

The Conservatives come into this election holding just four seats in the 905: two in Durham Region and two in York Region.

They haven't won a single seat in Brampton or Mississauga since 2011. If Poilievre's team is to flip any of the 12 seats in these cities from the Liberals, this is arguably their best shot: Mississauga—Lakeshore was the closest race in Peel Region in 2021, with the Liberals taking it by a margin of about six percentage points. 

Liberal candidate Charles Sousa, who delivered six provincial budgets as Kathleen Wynne's finance minister, won this seat by a more comfortable margin of 14 percentage points in a byelection in December 2022. Conservative candidate Tom Ellard is a veteran who went on to a post-military career in project management. 

Other candidates: Evelyn Butler (NDP), Carlton Darby (independent), Anna Di Carlo (Marxist-Leninist), Mary Kidnew (Green), Fahad Rao (PPC).

Formerly known as Durham, this is a riding where the fate of the auto sector resonates with many voters. Its Conservative incumbent, Jamil Jivani, won Durham by a huge margin in a 2024 byelection to fill the vacancy created by former leader Erin O'Toole's resignation.

Jivani was invited to Donald Trump's inauguration by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, a friend since their days at Yale. His Liberal rival in the race is Bridget Girard, a teacher and school principal.

Other candidates: Clint Cole (United), Julie Dietrich (Green), Pranay Gunti (independent), Ghuzna Imam (Centrist), Elenor Marano (NDP), Adam Smith (Rhinoceros), Thomas Zekveld (Christian Heritage).

This seat makes the list because of Burlington's history of more than 40 years as the most consistent bellwether riding in the Greater Toronto Area. Its voters have elected a member of the winning party in every general election since 1984. 

Karina Gould – a former cabinet minister and a contender in the Liberal leadership race that Carney won – is seeking her fourth term. Her Conservative challenger is Emily Brown, who has a professional background as a scientific researcher for oil companies and as a math professor. 

Other candidates: Michael Bator (PPC), Michael Beauchemin (NDP), Paul Harper (Rhinoceros), Kyle Hutton (Green), Ocean Marshall (Libertarian).

Senior reporter

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