Mayoral candidate John Tory may be leading in the latest polls, but Olivia Chow continues to attract the most abusive comments on Facebook.

A Star investigation shows that, since the former NDP MP announced her campaign on March 13, some 1,756 racist, sexist and other offensive posts have been removed from her Facebook wall, most likely by her staff.

The largest number of comments removed from a single post, which outlined Chow’s plan to plant 100,000 trees at no cost to the taxpayer, was 106.

That entry was met with a barrage of comments personally attacking Chow.

Similarly, 95 comments were removed from a single April post that criticized Mayor Ford.

A random sampling of deleted posts called the candidate “Chairman Chow,” an “attention wh---”, and a “useless, ignorant b----”.

The comments removed by campaign staff were found by the Star using an automated program that scans comments on a Facebook page every hour. This program records any new comments, but also checks to see whether any past comments are missing.

The program will not catch all removed comments, nor can it detect whether it was the page’s administrator or the posters themselves who hid or deleted comments.

The number of comments removed from Chow’s Facebook postings eclipses those deleted by the other main candidates’ campaigns. Over the same six-month period, comments removed from postings by Mayor Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's poilcard), John Tory, David Soknacki and Karen Stintz (open Karen Stintz's poilcard) totalled 195, 2561, 11, and 24 respectively. (Stintz, Soknacki and Ford have since dropped out of the race. Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's poilcard), whose team has already deleted four posts, is running to replace his brother Rob.)

But while Chow’s account had the most deleted comments overall, proportionately more were deleted from Tory’s since the Star first reported on the practice of removing Facebook users’ comments in March.

A Star analysis of the data shows a tenfold increase in Tory’s deletions, from 16 in March to an overall total of 256 by late September.

Jennifer Hollett, digital director for the Chow campaign, says the high number of deletions is a reflection of the degree of attention — and large number of “likes” — her candidate’s Facebook page has attracted.

“We just surpassed 57,000 ‘likes,’ and John Tory has 8,223 ‘likes,’ so the amount of comments we’re going to receive is going to be much higher. Otherwise 1,500 comments seems high, but doesn’t seem so high when you take into account the number of ‘likes,’” she said.

A per capita calculation shows that 28 comments were removed per 1,000 likes for Tory; for Chow, 30 comments per 1,000 likes.

“I think Olivia’s campaign deals with more racist, sexist and inflammatory comments than the other campaigns because she is the only high-profile, female candidate, and she’s an immigrant,” says Hollett.

“We have supporters, we have people who are debating and discussing policy — and we welcome that — but there definitely are ‘agent provocateurs’ who come in and try and rile people up. That’s just the culture of trolls and their place in social media.”

Tory spokesperson Amanda Galbraith said their campaign also wants and encourages a free and open debate.

“But as you know, with more discussion there’ll be more folks with varying views. So our policy is anything that can be considered abusive or libelous or racist will be removed,” she says.

With the Oct. 27 election just weeks away, the number of deletions appears to be rising.

Chow’s campaign appears to have removed 275 comments from her Facebook wall in the few weeks of September alone — double the figure from August and a monthly total that has not been seen since March when Chow first launched her campaign.

Greg Elmer, an associate professor of communication and culture at Ryerson University, says he’s not surprised by the abusive nature of some posts.

“Often local campaigns can be the most vicious and personal, because they relate to people and issues that are of closer proximity to voters,” he says.

“This campaign has also been overshadowed by the fractious nature of city politics under Rob Ford — I see this as an extension of the Ford’s partisan approach, and reaction to it all on all sides and from all camps.”

Deletions from Rob Ford’s main Facebook page are comparatively low, peaking at 50 in May.

Elmer adds that many of the comments removed aren’t particularly offensive — they’re just clogging up the campaigns’ pages and making it harder to read more substantive content.

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“It’s difficult to determine who is posting these messages, but from the content I would conclude that they are folks who have strong political opinions or have already decided who they will be ticking the box for,” he says.

“There are glimpses of opinions about transit,” says Elmer. “But overall I would say most comments are the equivalent of heckling at campaign events.”

Jim Duncan, from Etobicoke, is one of these “hecklers.”

The 64-year-old project manager had six comments removed from Chow’s wall in April. Duncan says his comments came out of frustration with her campaign and the policies she was proposing.

“I don’t want a socialist mayor,” says Duncan. “So [adding these comments] is a way of chipping away at the morale a little bit. I see them as the opponent, and so I want to undermine her campaign a little bit.”

One of Duncan’s comments read: “Chow has returned nothing. Has taken from taxpayers for decades. Cant string two words together and couldnt organize a one car funeral.”

He denies that this was meant as a racist jibe, or that his comments constitute trolling.

“My comment had nothing to do with her ethnicity, or the fact that English isn’t her first language,” says Duncan. “What it had to do with — if you listened to her in the most recent debate — was that she couldn’t get into the conversation, she never had skills training on how you can interject in a debate and to be heard.”

The digital director of Chow’s campaign disagrees with that interpretation.

“It’s an attack, it’s not a discussion of ideas,” says Hollett. “It’s someone who’s trying to rile up the community.”

Andrew Steven feels he’s had comments unfairly removed from Tory’s Facebook wall.

The 30-year-old Ryerson University student had four comments removed in May, the majority of which concerned the candidate’s usage of the #TOpoli hashtag.

“He would use the #TOpoli hashtag, which is really just for Toronto politics, but he was using it for fluff things,” says Steven.

“I remember he used it for Woofstock — this isn’t an event strictly relating to politics. This is something an image consultant or publicist told him to do. This isn’t essential information for voters.”

Steven says his comments weren’t meant as a personal attack on Tory or his policies, and feels they were simply removed to ensure the campaign’s posts stayed “on message.”

Elmer says that this is an all too common practice, with many electoral campaigns completely disabling the commenting function altogether.

“These are largely controlled spaces, as they reflect back upon the campaign and candidate,” he says. “Politics is a heavily stage-managed affair, whether on stage, in front of the cameras, or on Facebook.”

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