While British Columbians voted in a Conservative government for the first time in close to a century over the weekend, Vancouver elected a more progressive municipal government just a week earlier, marking a major contrast between the province’s largest urban centre and the rest of the province.
And this week, Toronto voted in progressive Olivia Chow for a second term, as the province continues to be led by a Progressive Conservative government.
The deep urban to rural divide was also seen in Alberta’s referendum. Putting aside the separation-related question, Edmonton and Calgary voted against almost all the changes Premier Danielle Smith had sought with the other nine questions, while the areas outside the two major urban centres generally endorsed those changes.
With the deepening gap, the suburbs are playing an increasingly decisive role in elections, becoming an in-between slice of the electorate that’s ready to swing during key elections, according to McMaster University political science professor Peter Graefe.
“Our elections are going to be decided by what people call the 905 in Toronto, and similar kinds of belts around Montreal and Vancouver, maybe to a lesser extent Calgary,” Graefe told The Epoch Times.
“The 905” refers to a telephone area code in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) encompassing various suburban communities surrounding Toronto, including Brampton, Vaughan, Mississauga, Markham, Richmond Hill, Oakville, Burlington, and parts of the Durham Region.
Vancouver Mayor-elect Pete Fry and his mother, Liberal MP Hedy Fry, leave the podium on civic election night in Vancouver, on Oct. 17, 2026. The Canadian Press/Ethan Cairns
Shifting Suburbs
Several suburban constituencies changed parties in the Oct. 24 B.C. election. In Delta North, the provincial NDP won by 12.5 percent in the 2024 election only to lose by nearly 13 percent to the B.C. Conservatives in the 2026 election, according to preliminary results from Elections BC.
In Coquitlam-Maillardville, the B.C. NDP won by 12 percent in 2024, only to lose by roughly 8 percent to the B.C. Conservatives in the recent contest.
In Alberta’s referendum on Oct. 19, the questions favouring greater provincial power generally followed the rural-urban divide, with rural voters generally favouring the proposed changes and voters in Edmonton and Calgary more often opposing them.
Suburban areas, however, were more mixed in their votes. While a majority opposed holding a referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada, they generally supported several of the proposed policy changes and constitutional reforms.
Suburban constituencies have also changed hands in federal elections.
In the April 2025 federal election, Conservatives made gains in several Greater Toronto Area suburbs despite losing the election nationally. The Conservatives picked up unexpected suburban seats—including the riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge, for example, which was previously held by the Liberals, with 60 percent compared to a showing of 38 percent by the Grits.
Conservative Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson speaks to supporters in the crowd during provincial election night in Vancouver, on Oct. 24, 2026. The Canadian Press/Ethan Cairns
Another upset took place in the 2025 election in Brampton West, where Conservative challenger Amarjeet Gill defeated Liberal incumbent and former cabinet minister Kamal Khera, 49.8 percent to 47.6 percent. The riding had been led by Khera since 2015, who had won the previous election by more than 12,000 votes.
An analysis by the University of Toronto School of Cities found that Conservatives made significant gains in Toronto’s suburbs, including flipping a number of constituencies in Markham and Brampton. They also increased their support in various suburbs in the Vancouver area, although this did not lead to additional seats in those ridings.
Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, pointed to the 2011 federal election when former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives won their first majority government partly because “they captured a number of suburban seats that they didn’t have before.”
Many of the suburban seats switched over again when Harper was defeated by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015.
“The suburbs are crucial,” Wiseman told The Epoch Times. “They are the difference between which party wins and loses, and whether it’s a majority or a minority.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow celebrates her re-election in Toronto on Oct. 26, 2026. The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette
Why Do Suburbs Vote Less Predictably?
Graefe said one of the reasons suburbs often swing in voting is that many suburban residents want lower taxes and relief from financial pressures while also seeking better infrastructure, transportation, health care, and schools. This gives both centre-left and right-leaning parties an often effective entry point to appeal to voters who may not otherwise hold strongly defined political views, according to Graefe.
“They’re pulled in two directions,” Graefe said. “There’s a lot of people who are not as affirmed in their way of thinking about the world and politically.”
Wiseman said this effect is partly due to the origins of their residents. While immigrants and upwardly mobile individuals may move from downtown cores or poorer urban areas to the suburbs as their finances improve, suburbs also tend to draw rural residents who don’t want to live in a dense urban area but want an in-between lifestyle, he said.
The resulting mix of incomes, backgrounds, and priorities can make suburban constituencies less politically predictable than many urban or rural areas, he said.
Wiseman traces the importance of the suburban vote in Canadian politics to a realignment of the federal Liberal party in the 1960s, which oriented it more directly to progressive urban voters and began entrenching the more modern form of Canada’s urban-rural divide.
Wiseman said as rural and urban votes became increasingly predictable, exurban and suburban votes became crucial to outcomes.
“You can predict how the inner cities are going to vote. You can predict how the rural areas are going to vote, so the suburban vote is the one that tips the balance,” he said.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith answers questions from the media following a speech in Calgary on Oct. 16. Carlos Herrera for The Epoch Times.
How Suburbs Could Shape Future Elections
Wiseman noted that political campaigns and online and offline microtargeting have become more sophisticated in the past decade, including messaging tailored to suburbs.
“The pitch you make in the suburbs is different than the pitch you make in rural areas and in inner cities,” he said, adding that campaigners tailor their messages to suburban households based on demographic clues. Children’s toys in the yard, for example, may result in a brochure focused on benefits for families or parents of young kids.
Graefe said that increasingly sophisticated microtargeting that focuses on each individual could also prove especially effective in suburban constituencies, where voters have diverse and sometimes competing interests and may not hold as firm partisan loyalties.
“I think the ability of parties to kind of slice and dice the electorate and figure out ways to appeal to them does open possibilities for [them] to be organized politically,” he said. “Not just along these kind of very broad lines of urban, rural, or a class position, but maybe in other ways too around specific lifestyle choices or specific promises.”
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