While the PCs maintain a 14-point advantage across Ontario ahead of next week’s election, the Liberals have now pulled ahead in Toronto, a new survey by CTV News’ official pollster Nanos Research shows.
The survey of 931 Ontario voters, released Friday, found that 45.2 per cent of decided respondents support the PCs, while 31.3 per cent support the Liberals. About 16.8 per cent of voters support the NDP, 5.1 per cent support the Green Party, and 1.6 per cent would support another candidate.
Among both decided and undecided voters, 40.3 per cent said they support the PCs, 27.8 per cent support the Liberals, 14.9 per cent support the NDP, and 4.6 per cent support the Green Party. The survey found that 1.4 per cent said they would support another candidate and 11 per cent are still “undecided.”
“The Ontario PCs hold a fourteen point advantage over the Liberals in ballot support and lead in all regions except Toronto. Of note in Toronto, Liberals are ahead of the PCs and Crombie tops Ford as preferred premier by 10 points,” Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research, said in his analysis accompanying the poll.
In past weeks, the battle for Toronto was a tight race between the two leading parties but on Friday, the survey found that 43.3 per cent of Toronto respondents now say they would support the Liberals versus 36.6 per cent who expressed support for the PCs. About 15.3 per cent of Toronto voters said they would vote for the NDP and 3.9 per cent said they would vote for the Green Party.
In the GTA, the PCs lead the second-place Liberals by more than 20 percentage points, with 53.2 per cent saying they support the Progressive Conservatives and 30.7 per cent backing the Liberals.
The random survey, which interviewed voters by phone and online between Feb.18 and Feb. 20, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
