[Ottawa – July 19, 2013] – After an exciting few months that saw the Ontario Liberals vaulted from last place to first to second to first again, it appears that Ontario’s political landscape is beginning to settle as Canadians break for the summer. While the five-point lead enjoyed by the Ontario Liberals in May has discreetly shrunk to a slightly less comfortable three-point margin, the overall picture has remained relatively stable.
The Ontario Liberals lead their Progressive Conservative rivals 31.9 to 28.9. The NDP, meanwhile, is enjoying a modest rebound after watching their support gradually slide over three consecutive polls and the party now sits at 25.9 points. The Greens are at 9 per cent at have not budged since the last election.
Turning to the demographic highlights, the Ontario Liberals have opened up a sizeable lead with women and the party would likely be looking at a majority government if men were barred from voting. Men, however, have centred around the Progressive Conservative Party and there is a twelve point gap between Progressive Conservative supporters who identify themselves as female and those who identify themselves as male.
Elsewhere, the Liberals are holding their lead among university graduates while the Progressive Conservatives continue to lead the high school and college educated cohorts. The Liberals do very well with seniors, but are failing to capitalize on Ontario’s’ younger generations, who seem to be exploring political alternatives such as the NDP and the Green Party.
One last point worth mentioning is that the Ontario voter landscape is unusually twinned to the federal landscape. Both the provincial and federal Liberal parties have seen their leads narrow in the last two months. Furthermore, all four parties are sitting at numbers comparable to those of their federal counterparts and the underlying demographic patterns are quite similar. It will be interesting to see whether these patterns will hold over the coming months. If so, this could signal that Ontarians are beginning to associate themselves less and less with parties and individual politicians, and more and more with political “brands”. The implications of this change are unclear, but either way, it deserves further study.
Click here for the full report: Full Report (July 19, 2013)