The Progressive Conservatives’ multimillion-dollar advertising blitz is helping Premier Doug Ford and hurting Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, a new poll suggests.
In the Abacus monthly tracking survey for the Star, Ford’s Tories were at 41 per cent to 25 per cent for Crombie’s Liberals, 21 per cent for Marit Stiles’s New Democrats and seven per cent for Mike Schreiner’s Greens.
The Liberals dipped by two percentage points from last month’s poll while the other three main parties remained static.
It comes as the governing PC party is dominating the airwaves ahead of May 2 byelections in Milton and the London-area riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex.
The Tories are broadcasting folksy one-minute spots showing Ford getting ready for work in the morning, chatting to Ontarians on the phone and meeting a diverse range of voters to hear their concerns while acknowledging he’s made mistakes.
“You can’t always get it right. Let me tell you, when I don’t, I hear from the people,” the premier says in the ad, referring to the $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal currently being investigated by the RCMP.
“I always ask my team, what are we doing to make life better and easier for people out there?” Ford says amid footage of him talking to a family in their spacious suburban home and meeting patrons in a grocery store and a restaurant.
Those complement a PC attack ad that has been in heavy rotation since Crombie took the Liberal helm on Dec. 2 deriding her as a proponent of the federal carbon price — even though she has distanced herself from the levy.
“There’s evidence that campaign is working to weaken her,” said Abacus president David Coletto said Friday.
Abacus surveyed 995 Ontarians from April 11 until last Tuesday using online panels based on the Lucid exchange platform. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The poll was conducted after the federal Liberals’ price on carbon pollution rose to $80 a tonne from $65 on April 1 and comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity remains in a slump.
“A distaste for Trudeau and a distaste for the carbon tax helps keep Ford’s voting coalition together,” said Coletto.
“The weakness of the Liberal brand federally is acting as an anchor on the Liberals provincially,” he said, noting, as was the case in last month’s poll, popular federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is having a halo effect on the provincial PCs.
Coletto said the Tories’ aggressive campaign against Crombie, a three-term Mississauga mayor, appears to be having an impact.
“If you can do it, it’s smart to start defining a new opponent as soon as you can,” he said.
At the same time the PC party has been broadcasting political ads paid for by donors, the government is airing taxpayer-funded commercials touting Ontario’s economy and its ongoing infrastructure improvements.Â
“So they’re hitting Bonnie Crombie with the partisan ads and you’re seeing the government ads everywhere.”
In terms of voters’ sentiments toward the leaders, 35 per cent of respondents said they had a positive impression of Ford while 42 per cent had a negative impression with 22 per cent neutral and two per cent didn’t know enough to say.
That’s a net impression rating for the premier of minus seven per cent, an improvement from recent months.
The Liberals’ Crombie was 28 per cent positive, 32 per cent negative, 24 per cent neutral and 17 per cent unsure for a net rating of minus four per cent, which is lower than last month.
Meanwhile, the NDP’s Stiles had a 27 per cent positive, 26 per cent negative, 27 per cent neutral and 20 per cent unsure for a net rating of plus one per cent, up from March.
The Greens’ Schreiner was essentially unchanged with a 19 per cent positive, 21 per cent negative, 36 per cent neutral and 23 per cent unsure for a net rating of minus two per cent.
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