PC candidate Neil Lumsden is on track to pick up Hamilton East-Stoney Creek from the NDP in a complicated local race, a Mainstreet riding poll indicates.

Lumsden has a 9.5 per cent lead over the Liberals' Jason Farr despite significant support for both the New Blue Party and the Ontario Party, which combined are polling at about 7 per cent.

The riding's political ecology has clearly been changed by NDP leader Andrea Horwath's decision to kick long-time MPP Paul Miller out of the caucus over his membership in an Islamophobic Facebook group.

At the time, Horwath referred to "a pattern of troubling behaviour."

There had been a number of complaints about Miller from former staffers over the years.

Miller, who is in the process of suing Horwath and the NDP, had been been the NDP MPP for Hamilton East-Stoney Creek since the 2007 election, twice getting over 50 per cent of the vote.

He is running as an independent in this election, backed by about 10 per cent of local voters in the poll. United Steelworkers Local 1005, the union's Hamilton local, is supporting Miller's candidacy.

The combined total support for Miller and the official NDP candidate, Zaigham Butt, would be around 28 per cent, a strong second place.

Lumsden spent almost a decade playing in the CFL.

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This Mainstreet Research poll was conducted on May 21 and 22. A sample of 411 people was interviewed by automated telephone interviews. The poll is accurate to within ±4.8 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 Canada.

Mainstreet Research is part owner of iPolitics and QP Briefing.

Riding poll: PCs lead in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek after ex-NDP MPP’s firing

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