Ontario: Let The Pollster Wars Commence

On Leger, IRG, And Two Polling Universes

Well, that was a fun couple days of optimism.

Leger and Innovative Research Group have both dropped Ontario polls since this morning’s column, with Leger showing a 24% lead (46%-22%) over the Liberals with the NDP at 19%, while IRG has the even more headline grabbing number of Ford at 52%, against the OLP’s 23% and the NDP’s 18%. These would be landslides, and at IRG’s level it would probably mean both the NDP and Liberals under 10 seats.

I do believe the idea that Ford is doing well right now, even if I doubt it’s truly this well. Ford has been in the news in a mostly good light for weeks, he has been able to reframe himself as Fighting For Canada, and specifically for polls that would have been taken at the end of last week and into last weekend (as Leger was - there’s no field dates for IRG yet), it’s unsurprising the hat, and his willingness to slap down Danielle Smith, played well. Intellectually I know Ford sucks as much as ever, but it’s hard to summon the sheer visceral anger towards him in the same way right now. Doesn’t mean I’m voting for him, but my hatred is probably an 8 right now, down from my usual 11. And if a bunch of people who are less so but still negative on him have that same softening, you see how it happens.

If an election was held right now, averaging this week’s four polls (excluding Campaign Research, which as much as I respect Kouvalis for releasing is still PC internal data), the PCs would win 91 seats per my model. The NDP would end up at 18 seats, the Liberals would be at 12, with the Greens at 2 and 1 Independent. It’s not great!

I don’t think any of this holds during a campaign - Ford will be brought back to his actual record, the argument that the legislature being out of commission during a crisis won’t help, and Crombie being afforded more airtime will help. I get that. But it’s undeniable that there was a thread of fundamentally unearned optimism on the part of some who want Crombie to do well. I am optimistic she can put together a campaign to make the province listen, and we’ve seen good first steps. But they are fundamentally first steps.

The case for optimism for progressives is in faith, essentially. Campaigns can radically alter the state of play, and we’ve seen good campaigns from oppositions do just that. It was less well polled, so getting baseline readings is harder, but Susan Holt was tied in a Nanos poll in July 2024, months before she’d win by 13%. Even closer to the campaign’s official start the race was closer, with the first Mainstreet of the fall showing a 2% Liberal lead.

In Ontario 2014, a race generally described as a tossup broke decisively for the Liberals, as the PCs were unable to do basic math or explain how they’d do the basic things they promised to do without destroying public services. Canada 2015 is a similar case, but I’m wary of any Federal comps for one reason - a Federal election gets the absolute front of every news network and newspaper front page the entire time. An Ontario provincial election may not even be the most interesting election story of the month of February. The ability of the Liberals to captivate the public’s attention will be based on their own successes, not on the reliability of news directors and newspaper editors needing to fill time and column inches.

But the case for Ford winning and winning big remains as robust as ever, which is to say that the NDP are feckless and irrelevant as a broad province wide coalition and the Liberals need time to rebuild, deprived of a lot of time by the pandemic rendering the Del Duca leadership useless at anything other than basic opposition duties.

Crombie, while getting better, wasted the first few months of her leadership listening to people she shouldn’t have. Ford’s Captain Canada routine probably means that there was never a chance he would be seriously challenged, but the wasted months of 2024 stand out as when the trains started rolling to our current destination.

The honest truth is that I hope we can recover this and hold Ford to a majority like the one he had last time. I’d love to shrink the majority, but right now that seems like a dream. Doug Ford is in an incredibly robust position, the NDP are bleeding, and the Liberals are in an incredibly tough position. Ontario might be about to elect a significantly bigger landslide Progressive Conservative majority.

Let’s pray something changes.

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