Majority of Ontarians disapprove of Doug Ford's job performance: poll

Doug Ford’s recent labour reforms may have affected the way Ontarians view the Premier and his party.

According to the latest Campaign Research poll, Ford’s approval rating with respect to his job performance took a hit with results coming in at 37% approval, and 63% disapproval of his performance. Specifically, 41% of men and 34% of women approved of his performance.

The poll, which was conducted among 1836 Ontario residents, showed that if an election were held tomorrow, 34% would vote for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. They hold a two-point lead over the Ontario Liberal Party, who sit at 32%. The Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) would receive 25% of the vote coming in third place.

The Liberals and the NDP place first and second with the millennial vote while the PCs maintain a lead with those aged 45, states the poll results.

And most of those polled preferred the Liberals’ labour legislation, rather than Ford’s recent announcements with the majority of Ontarians (52%) opposing the freezing of the minimum wage at $14 until 2020 compared to 42% who support it.

“Saying you want to make Ontario ‘open for business’ doesn’t appear to be enough justification for rolling back popular labour reforms,” said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research, adding that “As Kathleen Wynne starts to fade from memory among the Ontario electorate, the Liberals seem to be regaining consideration from Ontarians.”

Ford has been premier for five months.

This online study was conducted by Campaign Research as part of its monthly omnibus study between November 06 and November 09, 2018 through an online survey of 1830 randomly selected Ontarian adults who are members of Maru/Blue’s online panel Maru Voice Canada and were provided with various incentives to respond. The panellists were selected to reflect Ontario’s age, gender and regional distributions in line with 2016 Statistics Canada census data. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 2.3%, 19 times out of 20.

The results have been weighted by age, gender, and region to match the population according to 2016 Census data. Certain areas or groups may be oversampled but have been weighted to reflect their proportion of Ontario’s population. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Ontario. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

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