Angus Reid poll shows voters give premier failing marks but would still back him to lead government
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Doug Ford isn’t getting good marks on his job performance in the latest poll from the Angus Reid Institute, but voters would clearly rather back him than his opponents. The poll shows voters believing that Ford is failing on top issues like affordability, inflation and healthcare.
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Yet, when asked who they would vote for, Ford’s PC’s are up, the NDP is flat and the Liberals are down.
Bonnie-mentum, it seems, is not a thing.
The Angus Reid poll shows Ford’s PCs would take 40% of the vote if an election were held today compared to 25% for Marit Stiles and the NDP and 23% for Bonnie Crombie and the Liberals. Compared to the last Angus Reid poll of Ontario politics, the PCs are up three points since March 2024, the NDP remains the same, but the Liberals have dropped four points from 27%.
The Ontario Liberals have been playing up Crombie, who took over as their new leader last December, as the person to revitalize the party. Ford clearly sees Crombie as a threat and spends more time focused on her than he does on NDP leader Stiles, who might actually feel slighted that Ford’s attention is elsewhere.
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Ford and his PC Party have spent significant sums on ads aimed at Crombie. and based on this poll and others, it seems to have worked at keeping her momentum in check. Crombie’s Liberals haven’t been able to break out of the mid 20s in polls by most major firms since she became leader.
Crombie was supposed to inject the Ontario Liberal Party with new life, kickstart fundraising and boost the party’s chances in the polls.
Instead, in this latest poll by the Angus Reid Institute, Crombie’s Liberals are in third place behind the NDP. According to official fundraising data from Elections Ontario pulled by the Toronto Sun last month, the Crombie Liberals also trail the NDP in fundraising with both of them well behind the Ford PCs.
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How can Ford be considered to be doing a bad job on the top issues of concern to voters and still be in place to win another majority if an election were held today?
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Quite simply, none of the opposition parties are offering anything of interest to voters and, quite frankly, no one can tell them apart.
In the last election campaign, the positions of the NDP, Liberals and Greens were identical. Their news releases would land in my inbox within moments of each other announcing similar policies and the same denunciations of Ford.
Since the last election, the NDP has chosen a new leader in Stiles, the Liberals have put Crombie in the top spot and the erstwhile Mike Schreiner remains as the leader of the Greens. Yet, today, it’s still nearly impossible to tell the parties apart from one another.
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What does one offer that the other hasn’t already said.
They are all chasing the same downtown Toronto super progressive faculty club vote. They all want to be the most popular politician among the folks who live and breathe the rarified campus air of our elite academic institutions.
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That isn’t where most people live, that isn’t the way most people think, that isn’t where the majority of the votes are in Ontario.
For all his faults, Doug Ford has a better finger on the pulse of where voters in the province are than the other three leaders combined. That is likely why, even though voters don’t think he’s doing a good job, they are giving him the benefit of the doubt and parking their vote with him.
Ford understands where voters are at, the others are trying to impress the wrong people.
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