For the past nine days the Toronto mayoral candidates have talked up their messages at photo ops, news conferences and, of course, debates. They’ve also helped out at a food banks, canvassed door to door and done as many media interviews as the campaigns can fit in. It’s a crowded, grueling schedule.

A quick look at Olivia Chow’s itinerary for Friday has her first campaign appearance at 7 a.m. and her day ending at a mayoral candidate forum 14 hours later.

Today, Doug Ford hit another series of wards in his blitz through the city. At one stop he took time to go over his policy for affordable housing. Ford focussed on what the last administration accomplished in getting started on fixing up Toronto Community Housing. All three candidates ended their day at another debate this one hosted by the CBC.

Each of the candidates has their own internal polling to guide them, but those numbers are closely guarded. Those polls help with where to focus their campaign efforts on the last days. The last public poll was nine days ago and it showed John Tory with the slimmest of leads over Ford in second and Chow in third.

Today, the media finally got a new poll to mull over. Forum Research was back in the field and reported some movement. Tory held his support and, if the election were held today, he would garner 39 per cent support. Ford’s support took the biggest hit over the past week or so down four points to 33 per cent. Chow added a point from a week ago to 23 per cent. This poll did not offer those polled the chance to pick candidate Ari Goldkind, but four per cent said they would vote for “another candidate,” up from two per cent.

The president of Forum, Lorne Bozinoff, said a six point spread “is not a big difference with 11 days to go and getting the vote out is going to be really important.” Yes, there is still time for Ford to make up ground - but the task gets more and more difficult. The reality is that support for Tory and Chow, at least according to Forum’s polling, is holding up. The poll is also not good news for Chow. Bozinoff said Chow “is doing really badly in the suburbs” where she is polling 20 per cent or less.

The poll also revealed the interest across the city in this municipal election. Bozinoff pointed to the high response rate the poll received. “The poll had a huge, huge response rate that showed great interest by voters in the race.” What he means is that when people were called they chose to answer Forum’s questions and not hang up at an unwanted call.

The interest in the campaign that Bozinoff has detected seems to be spilling over in the advance poll. Yesterday was another strong day with lots of voters getting out and casting their ballots early. Toronto has expanded its advance polling stations and now there is one in every ward in the city making it easier to get out and vote early.

A final note – in Mississauga the advance poll was last week and the numbers for that city came in low. With Mayor Hazel McCallion retiring there is a mayoral race in Mississauga for the first time in, well, decades, but only about 14,608 showed up to vote early. That’s down almost a thousand from 2010.