If the media claims that it's the voice of the people, then it is doing a great job of representing the confusion prevailing in Toronto. Some are doing what many are doing: holding their nose and voting for George Smitherman, with enough disclaimers behind them to save face if he loses. Others have backed Rob Ford to the hilt, while Joe Pantalone’s support — sparse, but alive — comes from the heart. Spacing looked at the published endorsements — from mainstream, alternative and online publications — over the last week and came to the conclusion that the media seems to reflect opinion on the ground — no more, no less. To start off with, the Toronto Star endorsed George Smitherman as the candidate they believe best offers "a combination of a fresh perspective and an experienced hand at the helm." It's interesting that they choose to dismiss the talk about Smitherman being the lesser of two evils as "arrant nonsense," touting his credentials and experience as something Toronto needs. While they do mention his faults, the Star's position is clear — solidly behind Smitherman. (Or at least it was based on that endorsement; Saturday's edition proclaimed: "Ford or Smitherman? Neither" while columnist Royson James gave us, in his own words, "another reason for cynicism.") The Toronto Sun also published its endorsement last Sunday, but went the other way, endorsing Rob Ford. The editorial argues he's the only person who can tackle the big job of cleaning up the mess at City Council. Like the Star, the Sun was quite clear with its choice, but differed in acknowledging Ford's weaknesses.

The media has faced a fair amount of criticism in this election from various quarters for picking just five frontrunner candidates. The choice was relatively quick, and not providing any significant amount of coverage to the (literally) dozens of other mayoral candidates. At Spacing we have highlighted the role of the media in helping shape the direction of the election as well, first boosting Rob Ford and now George Smitherman. However, the ability of the media to fulfill expectations deserves discussion. Last month, the Columbia Journalism Review's cover story, "The Hamster Wheel", tackled the issue of how the 24/7 news cycle and decreasing numbers of journalists was churning out less meaningful material, mainly copy from PR firms. The issue is that employment at news agencies has gone down while the number of stories has expanded tremendously, which means that journalists are producing more stories in lesser time. Since accuracy cannot take a hit (although whether it does is a different debate altogether), the content does. So now there are less in-depth interviews and more sound bytes, and shorter posts than ever (driven partially by the rise of blogs). No one can do justice to the complexities of City Hall in 300 words, but the journalists asked to cover City Hall rarely have the time to write 2,000 words on the given topic, not to mention the needed newspaper space. Instead, they often scramble to cover political events as they're happening in the city, especially in election season when it is common to have multiple events in the same day.

The media gives us the news. And part of this helps us chop up the running election, helping us make sense of the candidates and their platforms. Or so is the notion. The School for Public Policy and Governance, in collaboration with the Center for Municipal Finance and Governance at the Munk School of Global Affairs, played host to an event looking at the role of the media in the elections. Instead of being the ones asking questions, three city journalists were asked to answer questions from the general public. The panel consisted of Marcus Gee, columnist for the Globe and Mail, Royson James, municipal affairs columnist for the Toronto Star, and Matthew Blackett, creative directer and publisher of Spacing magazine — publisher of this blog, too. The evening was moderated by noted municipal issues scholar Enid Slack. Gee kicked off the event by delving into the reasons for Rob Ford’s success, beginning with an article he penned in January encouraging the Etobicoke councilor to run. It would have added interest and spice to the race, reasoned Gee, as a right-wing councillor with little hope of winning.  Ford was able, however, to capture the disgruntled sentiment of many and has been famously surfing as front-runner for over a month. Gee explained Ford’s message and strategy critically, stating that Ford “made Mel Lastman look like Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Rob Ford's rise from right-wing outsider to frontrunner in this marathon mayoral race has been extensively documented by Toronto's media. And it has been interesting to see how the portrayal of Rob Ford and his all-conquering campaign has evolved. In fact, it may be argued that the media has played (possibly unwittingly) a key role in every campaign's fortunes. Initially there was a nonplussed reaction from the media when Ford joined the race. Few expected the man from Etobicoke to mount a serious challenge to George Smitherman, who had then been anointed as frontrunner. Then, as Ford did indeed register a strong showing in the polls, there was incredulity, especially when a poll showed that he matched Smitherman. That was quickly replaced by disbelief and denial when Ford first inched to the top, and the results were called into doubt. Gradually, however, it has become clear that this is no joke — Ford does indeed enjoy the widest support amongst the candidates. And by a solid 24% margin over Smitherman. Now there is an air of rationalizing and resentful acceptance from the national media. The front pages on Monday morning declaring that Ford was set for a landslide may have been unbiased. But the editorials have not, to put it charitably, been supportive. They recognize why Ford is winning and have begun assigning responsibility — to the other candidates for not distinguishing themselves, to Rob Ford and his team for sticking to their message, to the citizens for not looking beyond Ford's promises, and to the outgoing David Miller for making people so frustrated. The media doesn't seem to realize that it has largely helped fulfill this rationalizing.

Forget Pollstra and Ipsos Reid, One Stop Media takes the cake for the best mayoral poll in this year's marathon race. Or, well, easily the most fun and innovative poll — even if it's not very accurate. In fact, that's the idea: to use technology and social media as a way to spark voter engagement. One Stop Media has hit on a way to both generate interest in the mayoral race and gauge online  support for candidates. They have produced Mayor Munch, a Toronto election-themed version of Pac-Man, which allows users to play as different candidates, eating votes instead of food. The enemies, of course, are the opposing candidates. The game itself is simple and not too challenging, albeit a little clunky. It plays on Flash and One Stop Media plans to roll out a mobile version of the game soon. The idea is that a candidate's popularity determines how often he or she gets chosen, and thus the game provides polling results in real time. Say, for example, that you're a Rocco Rossi supporter. One Stop assumes that you will pick Rossi as your Pac-Man to collect votes before Rob Ford or George Smitherman can kill you. Of course, this "poll" is hardly meant to be definitive — it's biased towards Internet users and the results can easily be twisted by a dedicated group of campaigners. Indeed, the company expects that to happen, through the increased use of guest players who can play anonymously to hijack the poll. However, the goal is not to predict the winner of the race, although any correlation between online and real results would be interesting, indeed.

This year's mayoral race has already seen many more public debates amongst the candidates than ever before. Yet the electorate doesn't seem to be all that excited about choosing a new mayor for the city on October 25. While a large part of this is undoubtedly due to the uninspiring conversations surrounding the election, it must be said that the debates haven't lived up to expectations. While the candidates have chosen to adopt mud-slinging and bickering, moderators and audiences across Toronto have failed to tease out a positive, progressive, and actionable discourse from the hopefuls — though it isn't for a lack of effort. There hasn't been a shortage of focused debates. Ranging from topics such as seniors to heritage, but there has been a lack of actual policy talk. Now is time to get down to the nitty gritty, which is what actually separates the candidates. The air of disillusionment that seems to have pervaded this year's campaign seems to come primarily from the anti-campaigning, which does a good job at masking the fact that several candidates actually do have strong cases for the election. Some candidates, however, don't seem to respect others, which is unfortunate given that all of them claim to be consensus-builders (and will need to be, given Toronto's large council.) A polarized debate hurts every stakeholder; the way forward cannot simply consist of budget cuts or greater investment, it lies in doing both. Similarly, a debate revolving around every competitor's petty foibles is unproductive. It's not about who has a past record of jail time or who has been involved with a few failures in a long career. It's about who has the best overall record of making things work — and can fruitfully apply this record moving forward. It's not about who can sell the best pipe dreams, it's about who has the most prudent planning to implement their visions.

It's time to take another look at the use of social media in the upcoming elections. As we have covered previously, social media is one of the most important communication channels in this election, one that has never been effectively used before. Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla on the Internet, was but a shadow of its current self in the 2006 election, and Twitter didn't exist. Contrast this with today, where the Twitter hashtag voteTO has been a never ending conversation for months. Just like the mayoral race, the Twitter conversation surrounding the race has been dominated by Rob Ford vs George Smitherman over the summer with Ford vs. Everyone Else recently. Well, ever since he began topping the polls, to be precise. The frustration felt by Torontonians over the bickering is evident online too: "#voteTO has gone from bad to terrible. Vote for Ford, he'll eliminate the buffet. Now THAT'S a vision for the city."-@joelswag Funny enough, Smitherman and Ford are the most infrequent users of Twitter with only 328 and 448 tweets thus far. By contrast, social media power user Rocco Rossi has over 1700 tweets — but has polled so poorly that rumors of him stepping down from the race swirled around the election debate after he replaced his Director of Strategic Communications, Sachin Aggarwal with Warren Kinsella. The seeming paradox between Smitherman and Ford's low use of Twitter, but virtual monopoly over the hashtag #voteTO, can be explained by the highly active campaigners working for both candidates.

The Toronto mayoral race has increasingly been dominated by Rob Ford. And he has grabbed all the attention once again. He's been trending on Twitter for several days now, ever since the latest CP24 debate, and now the marijuana brouhaha has him in the limelight yet again. Just for a quick update, this is what happened. The top 5 polling candidates were brought together again for a debate by CP24, in which the major talking points revolved around immigration and the fair wage policy. You would be forgiven, however, for thinking that the debate was all about Tamil refugees and immigration. Midway through the evening, George Smitherman attacked Ford's anti-refugee stance (even though it really isn't a municipal issue), and the Etobicoke councillor stood by his words, saying, "We should take care of the people we have now before bringing in more." The opposing candidates quickly jumped on the statement as an opportunity to bring Ford down with condemnations even from the audience, saying "shame." This was clearly a planned effort to discredit Ford, and he swallowed the bait allowing his rivals to condemn him once again. Initially he issued a press release, but then told journalists outside City Hall the next morning: "... in a perfect world, what I’m saying is that I would like to deal with the 2.5 million [in Toronto] first." Rocco Rossi waded in for a live confrontation (video), in which Ford walked away calling it a "political game." Rossi and Sarah Thomson held a rally at Nathan Philips Square to express their disapproval. Although it didn't get a massive turnout, it is increasingly clear that Ford stepped out of line in the eyes of many Torontonians, who pride themselves on their city's diversity.

Ryerson University and the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) hosted the latest mayoral debate, with senior citizens as the focus. It was an opportunity for candidates to convince some of the most important (and coveted) voters that they were the best bet for the future. Every study on voter turnout notes the impact of older voters, especially in an aging Baby Boomer society—and the attendance reflected this. On top of this, it was a notably more meaningful debate than some that we have witnessed as of late. The big story from the debate centered around George Smitherman vs. Rob Ford, which has come to dominate the race. An increasingly listless mayoral race was sparked to life recently by rumors of a John Tory comeback, which would have finished off Rob Ford's campaign, according to several pundits. Tory's decision to stay at home has had two major impacts: to revive the Ford express and decisively shift the election into a bipartisan struggle. Namely, Team Ford vs. Team Smitherman. As it turned out, Smitherman won the battle, but Ford may be winning the war.

Just when you thought you could safely quit following the dispiriting mayoral race, it has been jolted back to life by the rumors of a new candidate. John Tory has polarized opinion, at least on social media.