Weekly Writ 4/30: Doug Ford is lucky he called an early election
Polls show the Ontario PCs neck-and-neck with the Liberals.
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Doug Ford has to be happy he called an election a year early in February 2025. Had he followed the schedule in the fixed election date law that was in force at the time, he’d be just about now dropping the writ for the 2026 provincial election in Ontario.
And, based on the latest numbers, he might’ve lost that election.
While the Ford PCs have been showing some weaker numbers than usual over the last few months, things appear to have worsened significantly just in the last few weeks. The catalyst might have been the purchase of a new government jet, a decision that was quickly reversed after a public outcry over the outlay of some $30 million for the airplane.
Whatever caused the drop, three new polls have suggested the Ontario PCs are no longer leading a divided opposition but are instead in a neck-and-neck race with the Ontario Liberals.
The polls come from Abacus Data, Pallas Data and Liaison Strategies. Abacus, the oldest of the three, puts the PCs at 37%, followed by the Liberals at 36% and the NDP at 17%. Pallas, conducted just a few days after the Abacus poll, put the PCs at 37%, the Liberals at 32% and the NDP at 24%. Liaison Strategies, the most recent poll, has the Liberals leading with 38% to 36% for the PCs and 20% for the NDP.
On average, that gives the PCs around 37%, followed closely by the Liberals at 35% and with the NDP in third with 20%.
The biggest problem for the PCs is not necessarily the current state of affairs, as they could still win the most seats with these kinds of numbers. Instead, it’s the trend line.
All three pollsters have been showing a slow and steady decline in PC support since last year. Since August, Abacus has the PCs losing 16 percentage points. Liaison has the PCs down 11 points since October. Pallas has the PCs down eight points since November. On average, the Liberals and New Democrats have roughly split the gains from the PCs’ losses between them.
Since this drop in support has been drawn out over time, it is hard to pinpoint a particular reason for the drop. But it’s clear that something has pushed the PC numbers down even more in just the last few weeks. Both Abacus and Pallas were in the field in early April, just before the ‘Gravy Plane’ story came out, and Liaison was in the field in late March. Compared to those previous polls, the PCs have dropped two points according to Abacus and three points according to both Liaison and Pallas. Combined with the Liberal uptick, the total average swing in just a few weeks between these two parties has been just over five points.
That alone would wipe out nearly half of the PCs’ margin of victory over the Liberals in the last election. The losses the PCs were suffering last fall and over the winter have been responsible for the rest.
This doesn’t mean that the PCs wouldn’t win another election if one were held today. There isn’t a tremendous amount of regional consistency across these three polls, but generally the numbers suggest the PCs lead in southwestern Ontario and are effectively tied with the Liberals in eastern Ontario and in the Greater Toronto Area. Since the Liberals don’t have a definitive lead in any region except in Toronto, this suggests that the PCs’ seat advantage would probably hold with these numbers.
But the PCs are now in minority territory — or, at least, potential minority territory. If an election were held today, the Ford PCs would have a good chance of losing their majority. It seems unlikely they could find a willing partner in Queen’s Park to prop them up in such a scenario, which means they’d risk losing their government.
Calling the last election a year early proved prescient. It gives Ford and the PCs another three years or so to arrest and reverse this decline in public support. And, if they do it, it wouldn’t be the first time. The PCs lost their polling lead several times during their first term and there were polls during their second term that suggested their lead was dwindling to single-digits. Ford’s approval rating has also gone up and down over the last eight years.
And Ford’s greatest advantage remains the weakness of his opposition. Abacus, for instance, awarded the PCs a mere one-point lead in voting intentions. But that same poll awarded Ford a 21-point lead on preferred premier over NDP leader Marit Stiles. This suggests that much of the Liberals’ support in the Abacus poll — and presumably the other two as well — is a hypothetical support that assumes an ideal (or at least acceptable) Liberal leader in place. It’s likely no accident that Mark Carney’s Liberals are very popular in Ontario at the moment. Undoubtedly, some respondents to these polls are imagining an Ontario Liberal Party that is a lot like Carney’s federal Liberal Party.
So, the OLP’s newfound support might prove ephemeral. But this does mean that the next leader of the OLP will be taking over a viable alternative to the Ford PCs, at least in the eyes of public opinion. It will be up to whoever that leader is to not squander the opportunity.
And, perhaps most challenging of all, keep themselves a viable alternative all the way to 2029 — or whenever there will next be a provincial election in Ontario.
CANADA-US PODCAST CROSS-OVER! - On Monday, Philippe J. Fournier and I joined Galen Druke of the GD Politics podcast to chat about the state of Canadian politics one year after Mark Carney’s election victory and how Canadians view their relationship with the United States. Listen to the pod here.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on Alexandre Boulerice’s upcoming resignation and jump to provincial politics, plus some familiar faces will be on New Brunswick’s municipal ballot next month.
Polls show little movement at the federal level, while the UCP remains in front in Alberta.
#EveryElectionProject: The 1878 Quebec election, one of the closest in provincial history.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Boulerice’s delayed jump to provincial politics could help Lewis
As widely expected (and reported at the end of last week), Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie MP Alexandre Boulerice has announced he is seeking the Québec Solidaire nomination for the riding of Gouin and will resign his federal seat. The surprise, though, is that Boulerice is not resigning until the Quebec election and will continue to sit as an Independent in the interim.