Angus Reid sees VERY tight start to Ontario Provincial campaign

If you are sitting on the Ontario Liberal campaign bus right now, you won’t be pleased to see the polling results just put out by our talented friend Angus Reid via Angus Reid Strategies. Wellington Financial Fund III has invested in Strategy’s sister company, Vision Critical.

Reid’s team was in the field on September 8th and 9th. Liberal support is 39% (down 8% from the last election) vs. 37% for the PCs (up 2% from the last election). In the category of which leader do you prefer, John Tory is at 38% while Dalton McGuinty attracted 28% — well below his own Party’s support.

Although I’m not a fan of publicly funding any faith-based schools, 41% of respondents supported Mr. Tory’s idea about faith-based school funding (see prior post “Faith-based financing“, Sept. 6-07), while 49% are against. If the 41% of people in favour of the policy vote for the PCs, you’d expect to see them win at least a minority government.

Key areas of concern for the sitting Liberal government include the fact that only 67% of people that voted Liberal in 2003 will support them this time. 54% of those polled believe it is time for a change in government, and only 27% believe the Liberals should be re-elected. The same people that feel McGuinty is the better leader, one assumes. Amazingly, 55% of Ontarians think the Province is “on the right track”, yet barely half are fans of the Premier taking all the credit for the Province being on the right track.

Here’s the official release:

[TORONTO – Sept. 13, 2007] – The governing Liberal Party is barely ahead in the early stages of the provincial electoral campaign in Ontario, a new Angus Reid Strategies poll has found.
In the online survey of a representative sample of 725 Ontario voters, 39 per cent of decided voters say they will cast a ballot for the Liberals in the Oct. 10 election. The Progressive Conservative Party is second with 37 per cent, followed by the New Democratic Party (NDP) with 13 per cent, and the Green Party with 10 per cent. In all, 28 per cent of respondents remain undecided.

When asked which of the two main party leaders would make the best Premier of Ontario, 38 per cent of respondents choose Progressive Conservative John Tory, while 28 per cent pick the current head of government—Liberal Dalton McGuinty. A third of respondents did not select either of the two politicians for the job.

The survey also shows that 80 per cent of Ontarians who voted for the Progressive Conservatives in 2003 will again support the party. Conversely, the Liberals are only holding on to 67 per cent of their voters in the last provincial ballot, and the NDP retains 56 per cent of its supporters from four years ago.

Across the province, 54 per cent of respondents believe it is time for a change in government, while 27 per cent think the current administration should be re-elected. In addition, 55 per cent of Ontarians think the province is on the right track, while 34 per cent believe it is on the wrong track.

The poll also asked Ontarians to voice their views on the referendum on electoral reform, which will take place on the same day as the legislative ballot. A third of respondents (33%) would keep the existing first-past-the-post electoral system, while 26 per cent would switch to the alternative mixed-member-proportional system. Three per cent of respondents would not participate on this plebiscite, and 38 per cent remain undecided.

Finally, the survey reviewed Tory’s proposal to extend full funding to non-Catholic faith-based schools as long as they teach the Ontario curriculum, only hire fully-qualified Ontario teachers, and agree to ongoing student testing and inspections by the province. In all, 41 per cent of respondents support the plan, while 49 per cent oppose it, and 10 per cent are undecided.

MRM