Steven Del Duca, like all party leaders, has been a rather busy man during the campaign.

He makes several stops per day, often with traffic-filled drives in between locations, and always makes time to talk to reporters on site.

So busy, that he's only canvassed his own Vaughan—Woodbridge riding about six times, the Liberal leader said on Monday.

"I would say about half a dozen times, give or take," he said. "But at this point, I couldn't even tell you what day it is right now. I think it's Monday, right?" he continued, channeling the thoughts of most, if not all, Ontarians.

Del Duca is fond of touting his decades-long residency in the riding. At a press conference just over two weeks ago, Del Duca said he'd been out canvassing twice, but his family had been helping to pick up the slack.

The Liberal leader is in a dog fight to win back the riding he held from 2012 to 2018, according to an iPolitics/Mainstreet Research poll taken before the writ period.

READ MORE: Riding poll: Del Duca behind in Vaughan—Woodbridge

Del Duca is backed by 42.4 per cent of voters in the riding. PC incumbent Michael Tibollo is at 45.6 per cent. The poll's margin or error is 4.4 per cent.

The iPolitics/Mainstreet Research polling dashboard projects Vaughan—Woodbridge as a tossup, surrounded by a sea of mostly-safe PC seats.

Tibollo has seen his stock slide during the PCs' four years in government. He started as solicitor general, but was demoted after news broke of lawsuits against him, and of his involvement in a Ponzi scheme in the 1990s. He was shuffled to tourism, and later to associate minister of mental health.

Del Duca lost to Tibollo by 18 points in 2018. In his first run for the seat (with different boundaries) in a 2012 byelection, Del Duca won by nearly 20 points. In the 2014 general election, he increased his margin to nearly 25 points. Before Del Duca, Liberal Greg Sorbara repped it from 2003 onwards.

Running in Vaughan—Woodbridge may not have been the best idea, said Karl Baldauf, a former senior aide in the PC government and a vice-president with the Macmillan Vantage policy group.

"I think that if Steven Del Duca could do it all over again, he probably would have asked (former Liberal leader) Kathleen Wynne to resign her seat, so he could have run in a byelection in Don Valley West, a riding that probably would have been much easier for the Liberals to win," Baldauf previously told QP Briefing.

Parachuting into a safe riding, however, could've made for bad optics, said Ashley Csanady, a senior consultant with Macmillan Vantage policy group and former staffer with the Wynne government, in a previous interview with QP Briefing.

"Let's say he'd gone for the seat that's now formerly occupied by Kathleen Wynne. People would have criticized him for parachuting in, and that he doesn't live there and doesn't know the community."

Liberal MP Francesco Sorbara has repped the riding on the federal level since 2015. From 2011 to 2015, when the riding was just Vaughan, Julian Fantino held it for the federal Conservatives. Before Fantino, Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacuqa held it for over a decade.

With files from Patrick Cain

For Del Duca, is six the magic number?

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