Doug Ford surges, Tory falters

| Filed under: Toronto

Lead is now just 2 points


TORONTO OCTOBER 6th, 2014 - In a random sampling of public opinion taken by the Forum Poll™ among 1218 Toronto voters, just fewer than 4-in-10 will vote for John Tory for mayor (39%) or for Doug Ford (37%) which means these two candidates are essentially tied at this sample size. This stands in stark contrast to last week's findings (September 29 - Tory 43%, Ford 33%), when the candidates were 10 points apart. Olivia Chow has improved her vote share from less than one fifth last week (20%) to slightly more now (22%). Very few will vote for another candidate (2%).


Ford's approval up sharply, Tory, Chow down

More than 4-in-10 Toronto voters approve of Doug Ford (42%), and this is stable since we last polled approval (September 22 - 45%). It must be pointed out that this is a higher level of approval than any achieved by his brother Rob Ford in the past 6 months (April, 2014 - 46%). John Tory's approval, on the other hand, has declined from two thirds two weeks ago (September 22 - 64%) to about one half now (53%). By the same token, Olivia Chow has seen her approval drop from well more than half two weeks ago (56%) to just more than 4-in-10 now (42%).


"This is a shocking upset indeed. Doug had a fairly good week last week, but his partisans clearly think he had a great week. He has neatly filched 4 points off John Tory and added them to his vote share," said Forum Research President, Dr. Lorne Bozinoff.

Lorne Bozinoff, Ph.D. is the president and founder of Forum Research. He can be reached at lbozinoff@forumresearch.com or at (416) 960-9603.