EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Doug Ford’s early election call will pay off for his Progressive Conservatives, a survey of potential voters late in the campaign suggests.
A recent poll of 989 voting-age Ontarians by Pallas Data for The Trillium found 46.3 per cent who said they’ve decided who they’re voting for, or are leaning toward a party, plan to cast their ballot for Ford’s PCs.
Behind them are Bonnie Crombie’s Liberals, supported by 29.1 per cent of decided and leaning voters, followed by Marit Stiles’ New Democrats, with 17.3 per cent of support.
There were 5.3 per cent of people polled who had intentions of, or were leaning toward, voting for Mike Schreiner’s Greens, and another two per cent with plans to vote for another party.
Pallas Data’s survey was conducted via automated telephone interviews, using interactive recording technology, on landlines and cellphones of people meant to represent the province’s population, weighted by age, gender and region. A survey of its sample size has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 out of 20 times.
Since Ontario has had more than two competitive political parties, any party receiving more than 40 per cent of total votes in a general election has won a majority government.
In Ontario’s last general election in 2022, Ford’s PCs won 83 of the 124 ridings in the province with 40.8 per cent of total votes. In the one before that, in 2018 when Ford was elected premier with his initial 76-seat majority, his PCs received 40.5 per cent of all votes.
The PCs are heading into Ontario’s 44th general election with 79 seats, while the NDP hold 28, the Liberals 9 and the Greens 2. Six seats were held by independent MPPs.
A third majority victory for Ford would grant him inclusion into rare company in the province’s political history. No premier has accomplished that feat since over 50 years ago.
Pallas Data’s recent poll also shows the PCs as potential voters’ favoured option in every region, among every age group, and among both men and women. Crombie’s Liberals are a fairly close second with women — 38.1 per cent of decided and leaning women prefer the PCs, followed by 34.1 per cent for the Liberals, 19.8 per cent for Stiles’ NDP, 6.2 per cent for Schreiner’s Greens, and 1.7 per cent for another party.
While Ford’s PCs are clearly favoured to win re-election on Thursday, the survey also found most respondents are dissatisfied with the direction the province is going. More than half — 55.9 per cent — said they believe the province is heading in the wrong direction, compared to 23 per cent who said it’s headed in the right one.
The poll shows very little has changed in public opinion since the early days of the campaign. Compared to a poll conducted in the first week of the campaign, the PCs and Liberals each edged up two points in vote intention at the expense of the NDP.
Just before polling day, voters view Ford's reason for calling the election as they did in the first week of the campaign — more say it was out of political self-interest than his stated goal of fighting U.S. tariffs, but many who hold that view intend to vote for his party anyway.
Voters’ views on whether the province is headed in the right or wrong direction — a metric that can prompt a change in government — were also roughly flat throughout the campaign.
Ford improved his favourability in Ontarians’ eyes by six points overall, Schreiner by five points, and Crombie by three. Stiles’ favourability slipped by almost three points.