As Ontario shifts into election mode, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are in position to win a comfortable majority, a Mainstreet poll released Thursday shows.

According to a projected seat count, the party would win 74 seats, the NDP would get 24, the Liberals would end up with 14, and the Greens would hold their one seat in Guelph.

Eleven seats are too close to call, but the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) could afford to lose them all (which is unlikely) and still form a majority.

“It definitely points to a majority,” said Mainstreet CEO Quito Maggi.

For a different outcome, something significant would have to change between now and June 2. Maggi said he wonders if Ford's decision to immediately dissolve the legislature after his budget was tabled yesterday might be that thing.

But he said it's strange that, while the government's election message is about getting things done, "it's not even going to try to pass its budget."

Budget day at Queen's Park was confused: Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy wouldn't confirm whether the government, if re-elected, would try to pass the same budget, but, immediately after the lockup, the premier's office said it would.

Opposition leaders pounced, including the NDP leader, who warned of a "possible bait-and-switch."

Polling appears to show some NDP voters choosing the Liberals instead, but Maggi says that’s a normal fluctuation that will continue to change.

“What tends to happen is — and we've seen this all early spring, from winter on — is the NDP and Liberals trading momentum.”

A minority of PC voters seem to be invested in the Ford brand. When asked whether they consider themselves part of "Ford Nation," 17 per cent of all respondents said "somewhat" or "completely," while an additional 25 per cent said "not much," but that they'd support, or would consider supporting, his party.

Voters who identify with Ford Nation tend to live in the Greater Toronto Area outside the city proper and be older than 65.

About eight per cent of respondents said they'd vote for a party other than the four represented at Queen's Park, including the Ontario Party, the New Blue, or an independent, Maggi says.

This group stands out for its strong opposition to pandemic restrictions. More than 80 per cent say mandates should either have been abandoned long ago or never adopted in the first place, as opposed to about a quarter of the total voters surveyed who said the same.

But will a small but vocal group that's against restrictions provide enough momentum on Ford’s right to affect the election?

Maggi doubts it, citing the paltry 4.9 per cent the People’s Party of Canada ended up with in the 2021 federal election, below what polls predicted.

Small, new parties have “little-to-no: organization, experienced candidates, experienced campaign managers, infrastructure, databases, and get-out-the-vote machinery that bigger parties have,” he said.

The conservative Ontario Party, led by former federal Conservative MP Derek Sloan, ran in the 2018 provincial election but got a tiny number of votes.

This week, it announced it had hired Roger Stone to be its senior strategy adviser. Stone is a former Donald Trump aide and veteran of U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign. Trump pardoned him after he was convicted for obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering.

Ontarians go to the polls on June 2.

This Mainstreet Research poll was conducted from April 25 to 27. A sample of 1,422 Ontarians aged 18 and older was interviewed by automated telephone interviews. The poll is accurate to within ±2.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The poll is weighted for age, sex, and region to be representative of the entire adult population of Ontario.

Mainstreet Research is part owner of iPolitics and QP Briefing.

Ontario PCs headed to majority in June 2 election, poll shows

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