The Progressive Conservative party continues to lead ahead of the June 7 provincial election, but the Ontario New Democratic Party is narrowing the gap with about 30 per cent support among voters, a new poll has found.
A Mainstreet Research poll released Friday found that among decided and leaning voters, 41.9 per cent supported the Doug Ford-led PC party and 29.3 per cent supported the NDP, led by Andrea Horwath. About 22.3 per cent of voters said they would cast a ballot for Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberal party and five per cent said they would vote for the Ontario Green party.
This is the second week in a row that a Mainstreet poll has shown the NDP ahead of the Liberals. Since last week’s poll, support for the New Democrats has increased almost one percentage point. Support for the PC party decreased by .04 percentage points.”
Quito Maggi, president and CEO of Mainstreat Research, says the poll shows that voters are still undecided about whether they will support the Liberals or the NDP, “although the NDP so far have the edge.”
“The long weekend is very significant in many campaigns,” said Maggi in a statement. “This is when voters get together with friends and family and opinions either solidify or soften. We would expect to see further movement after a long weekend. With the debate next week and more people beginning to pay attention to the race, we may have an exciting finish yet.”
Vote splitting a factor in PC support
According to the Mainstreet poll, support for the PC party was consistently over 40 per cent in every region in Ontario except for Toronto and Northern Ontario.
The NDP and the Liberals swap between second and third in terms of support for each provincial region. The Liberals have a staunch lead over the NDP in Toronto, but the NDP leads throughout the GTA, south central, southwestern, and Northern Ontario. The parties are almost tied in the eastern region of the province.
Maggi says that maintaining 40 per cent support across the province is “the magic number” for a majority government, but the PCs could be benefiting from vote splitting between the Liberals and the NDP.
“The PCs are still well poised to form government even though they are facing stiff competition from the Liberals in Toronto and the NDP in the North,” Maggi said. “But their chances of a majority will be under threat should progressives decide to back either the NDP or the Liberals en masse.”
Poll respondents were also asked what party would be their second choice and 27.8 per cent said they would choose the NDP. The Liberals were picked by 18.4 per cent of respondents, and 17.4 per cent said the PC party.
However, 40.3 per cent of respondents said they were very unlikely to change their mind.
Mainstreet surveyed 2350 Ontarians between May 15 and May 19. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 2.02 per cent and is accurate 19 times out of 20
