We’ll say right off the top: your vote always matters, regardless of the riding. But some ridings are closer than others, and when you look at seats like Etobicoke Centre – won by just 26 votes in 2011 – it can literally come down to a small handful of ballots.
READ MORE: Election 2015: How do I vote?
Toronto has long been a Liberal hotbed, but the NDP painted the downtown orange in 2011, and the Conservatives dominated in the suburbs.
Now 2015 brings a raft of tight races and the results look pretty unpredictable in the GTA. Here are some of the tightest, too-close-to-call campaigns racing to the finish line.
Don Valley West
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The Conservatives captured this longtime Liberal riding in 2011, but it wasn’t a decisive win; John Carmichael unseated Liberal Rob Oliphant by just 639 votes.
For Carmichael, it was actually third time lucky. He also ran in 2006 and 2008, and garnered more votes each time.
Prior to that, the riding stayed solidly in Liberal hands for 18 years, as John Godfrey served five terms from 1993 to 2008, before handing the reins to Oliphant, who served a single term.
Oliphant is fighting to regain his former seat, and he’s got plenty of help. It’s also Premier Kathleen Wynne’s riding, and she and Justin Trudeau have done some vocal campaigning.
Etobicoke Centre
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They don’t come much closer than this. Conservative Ted Opitz won this solidly Liberal riding in 2011 by just 26 votes.
The Liberals first won the riding in 1993 during the nationwide trouncing of the Progressive Conservatives, and the Grits held on through the next five elections.
READ MORE: Your riding’s candidates and voting history
Ousted Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj launched a legal battle over the razor-thin result, and it went all the way to the Supreme court, which upheld the result.
Wrzesnewskyj is back in 2015, determined to retake his old riding.
The Liberals have largely led in the polls, but not by much. This could be another very close race.
However, Opitz does have some very forceful supporters:
WATCH ABOVE: Pro-Harper supporter calls reporter ‘a lying piece of s***’
You may remember “angry old guy” Earl Cowan, who blew up at reporters at a Harper campaign stop in August, calling them “pieces of s—t.” That’s a Ted Opitz button on his lapel.
Scarborough-Guildwood
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This riding has remained steadily Liberal since its creation in 2004, but Conservative Chuck Konkel has kept chipping away at the Liberal lead.
Liberal John McKay won his third term comfortably in 2008, beating Konkel by just over 7,000 votes, but Konkel came oh-so-close to a win in 2011, with a difference of just 691 votes.
The riding lost some territory in a 2012 redistribution, and if you consider those new borders, Konkel only lost by 381 votes. Is 2015 the year he breaks through?
Mississauga East-Cooksville
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This relatively recent riding, first created in 2004, was another solidly Liberal stronghold until 2011. The Liberals won by wide margins in 2006 and 2008, but Conservative Wladyslaw Lizon eked out a 676-vote win in 2011.
READ MORE: 10 ridings the Liberals need to win to get out of 3rd place
Former Ontario MPP Peter Fonseca is aiming to recapture the riding for the Liberals in 2015, but could face an uphill battle. Redistributed riding results give Lizon a far wider margin victory in 2011, a difference of more than 3,000 votes.
Fonseca and the Liberals could see a big boost from one major endorsement; former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion spoke out in favour of Fonseca and the Liberals, and Hurricane Hazel still pulls some political weight. She didn’t endorse anyone in Mississauga in 2011, and the Liberals lost all their seats.
University–Rosedale
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A brand-new seat for 2015, there’s no colourful electoral history to recount and but the current race is too close to call.
The riding is made up of the northern parts of Toronto Centre – Liberal since 1993 – and Trinity-Spadina, a former NDP stronghold under Olivia Chow, but currently a Liberal Adam Vaughan’s seat.
READ MORE: Liberals jump out to 6 point lead ahead of Conservatives in latest Ipsos poll
That makes this a likely two-horse race between the Grits and NDP, and both parties are making a strong push. In the Liberal corner is MP Chrystia Freeland, a well-known writer and journalist who succeeded Bob Rae in Toronto Centre. The NDP counter with TV personality and activist Jennifer Hollett, who’s running neck-and-neck with Freeland, according to recent polls.
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