Ontario Liberals Holding On to Slim Lead
TORONTO – Politics – The Ontario Liberals are holding onto a lead in the latest poll by Ipsos Reid. However the results show that the New Democrats are gaining support at the expense of the Progressive Conservatives. The lead however is not huge. Factoring in the margin of error, the Liberals are up one point in the latest poll.
“With the volume turned down on the gas-plant scandal amid a deafening chorus of coverage of both the federal Senate scandal and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s antics, a new Ipsos Reid poll of provincial voting intentions, conducted for CTV News/CP24/CFRB Newstalk 1010 reveals that Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are holding the lead and have slightly improved on their bid for re-election, but the NDP led by Andrea Horwath are on the move, tightening the three-way race,” according to a release from Ipsos Reid.
If an election were held tomorrow, Premier Wynne’s Liberal party would receive 34% of the vote among decided voters, unchanged since May. Support for Time Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives has eased to 31% (down 3 points), while Andrea Horwath’s NDP have made serious gains and also sit at 31% of the vote (up 5 points). One in twenty (5%) Ontarians would vote for some other party (unchanged).
Many Ontario Voters Still Undecided
The tight province-wide race is made even closer by the relatively high proportion of undecided voters, which currently sits at 18% of Ontarians, meaning that it’s still anybody’s game. However, in the most-populous part of the province, the GTA, the Liberals (38%) and NDP (35%) lead the lagging Tories (23%).
Examining the results among the 46% of Ontarians who say that ‘nothing short of an emergency’ could stop them from getting out to the voting booth and casting their vote in the next election, it appears that Tory voters are by far the most committed to get out and vote at this stage in the game. The PC vote rises to 38%, followed by the Liberals who soften to 31% and the NDP who also soften to 27%.
While the turnout figures don’t much help the NDP, they are buoyed by the fact that 20% of Ontarians would choose them as the party they would support second, well ahead of the proportion who says the same about the Tories (12%) or Grits (12%). In particular, among Liberal voters, 50% of them would choose the NDP second, compared to just 21% who would vote PC second.
Keeping the Liberals optimistic, nearly four in ten (37%) say that the ‘Wynne government has done a good job and deserves re-election’, up 1 point since May. This figure, which often closely mirrors the percentage of popular vote for the incumbent on Election Day, should keep the Liberals competitive. Conversely, six in ten (63%) believe ‘it’s time for another provincial party to take over’, down 1 point.
On the issue of who would make the best Premier of Ontario, the three major-party leaders are tangled up in nearly a three-way tie. Kathleen Wynne is selected as the best Premier by 33% of Ontarians (no change), followed closely by 29% who say Horwath would make the best Premier (no change), and Hudak is close behind (28%, down 3 points). Just 10% believe Mike Schreiner would make the best Premier of Ontario (up 3 points).
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