ICYMI, our latest Ontario poll was released in the Trillium yesterday. In terms of voting intention, there has been absolutely little change since the election back in February.
Our provincial voting intention numbers this month compared the those of the third week of the campaign. Corporate wants you to find the difference.
We have been polling Ontario politics with the Trillium ever since Pallas Data was founded in 2023, and in that time, we have observed three things;
1) Ontarians have been expressing discontent with the Ford government for a long time. In our June 2024 poll, 41% of Ontarians said that the Ford PCs have been doing a very bad job of governing Ontario.
But Ford was keeping PC voters happy though.
Throughout our weekly polling during the election, over 50% of Ontarians said that the province was heading in the wrong direction – peaking at 57% in the third week of the election.
2) Despite all of this, Ontarians trust Doug Ford to lead the province over Marit Stiles and the soon-to-be departing Bonnie Crombie. In our September poll, 36% said that Ford would make the best premier, and 42% said they trust Ford to lead the economy, while leads to…
Ford still beat Stiles and Crombie on the health care question - an issue that progressive leaders usually do well with
3) The PCs haven’t dipped below the magic number of 40% in our polling in over a year - the number usually required to win a majority in government. Since Pallas’ founding, the PCs have averaged 41.2% in voting intention and 44.3% since the last election.
Doug Ford also holds the highly unusual distinction of increasing his vote share in each of the three elections he has contested (40.5% in 2018, 40.8% in 2023, 43% in 2025).
Thumbs Down On the Handling of the SDF
Well, we have more evidence of this conundrum in our latest round of polling. The Trillium broke the story of how Ontario’s Auditor General found that Labour Minister David Piccini’s office distributed the $2.5 billion Skills Development Fund (SDF) in a way that was not “fair, transparent or accountable,” with 63% of recent funding going to groups led by PC donors and over 60 lower-ranked applicants approved after hiring lobbyists.
We now see more PC voters saying that they are concerned about the handling of the SDF than not
44% said that they are very concerned with how the government has handled the SDF, including 28% of PC voters.
Also, 49% of Ontarians said the Ford government’s handling of the SDF made them much less trusting of the government, including 27% of PC voters.
And now that WSP Canada Inc. has won the 401 tunnel feasibility study contract, we decided to test support for building the tunnel again (we asked about it just over a year ago).
What’s interesting is the change among PC voters. Last year, the net approval for building the 401 tunnel was -7% (the most favourable out of any group).
Today, that number has more than tripled to -22%, with 41% of PC voters now saying they strongly oppose the idea.
What Happens After Doug?
It’s numbers like these that make NDP and Liberal voters furious. How is it that a government performing this badly in the minds of voters would comfortably win a majority if an election were held today?
Some Liberal supporters would quickly point the finger at their own party leadership and say that their own weak leadership is the reason why they can’t take advantage of this Conservative malaise.
Your Honour, I submit Exhibit A
While there might be some truth to that, I can’t simply accept that the public perception of Doug Ford’s strengths is simply a filling of the vacuum left by some unnamed Liberal leader.
I think that Ford, in his own right, has enough bona fides where enough Ontarians see him as the most trustworthy leader that the province can have right now.
So much so that I believe his greatest strength is keeping the Good Ship Ontario PC afloat all on his own.
A government with this much public malaise usually doesn’t do well in popular support, and Ford alone is the reason why they are winning. Do you think a David Piccini-led PC Party would be at 45% support? Right.
This is where the Nelson Mandela comparisons come in. As some of you might know, I did my doctorate at the London School of Economics. While there, I met a few South Africans.
Back then, they discussed the WHAM question their country was facing. WHAM as in “What happens after Mandela?”.
An extraordinary man with extraordinary achievements that ordinary successors likely can’t replicate
Much of the stability that post-apartheid South Africa enjoyed was brought about by Mandela himself, and people wondered if South Africa would revert to a country divided by factions (or perhaps even worse) once the man who dragged South Africa kicking and screaming to democracy passed away.
I wonder if Ontario PCs face their own WHAM problem once Doug Ford decides to call it a day to devote more time to pouring Kentucky bourbon down the drain.
This is not to say that Ford is fit to tie Mandela’s shoelaces as a statesman.
But he is rather well-trusted for a politician who is leading an untrusted government.
If Ford alone is powering the PC brand, there is a good chance the PCs will be in trouble if he decides to go. A government that is so far out of step with the public on its decisions will eventually find itself behind in voting intentions, too.
Usually, an unpopular government can rely on changing leaders to get a bounce in the polls (the Carney effect), but I think the reverse could happen to the Ontario PCs if Ford decides to go.
Now, the good news for the PCs is that it doesn’t look like Ford will be leaving soon. He is 60 years old and is relatively young for someone holding high political office in Ontario. Olivia Chow is 68. 57% of Ontario Liberals voted to keep Bonnie Crombie as leader, and she is 65. Mississauga mayor Carolyn Parrish is 79.
Doug Ford, the next time he’s on a university campus with some Ontario mayors
But whether it takes five years or fifteen, Ontario’s PC party will eventually have to answer the WHAM question – and based on these numbers, they should probably start thinking about it now.
