Olivia Chow continues to hold a commanding lead over the other candidates for Toronto mayor, according to a new poll released on Saturday morning.

Among decided voters surveyed by Liaison Strategies, Chow has 29 per cent of support. She leads in all city boroughs and age demographics.

It is consistent with other recent polls by Mainstreet Research and Forum Research that also have Chow as the front-runner in the mayoral race. As a result, her rival candidates have tried to discredit her, especially during this week’s first major debate.

"Trend lines are always more important than any individual snapshot. The story of the election continues to be the steady gains by Olivia Chow week after week,” David Valentin, the principal at Liaison Strategies, said in a news release.

Chow is significantly ahead of Mark Saunders, who came in second with 17 per cent of support, according to the poll. He is followed by Mitzie Hunter, who saw an increase of three percentage points from last week’s poll, garnering 15 per cent support.

Meanwhile, Matlow’s numbers continue to decline. Last week, he placed third with 15 per cent of support but has dropped to the fourth spot this week with 11 per cent.

"The long term trend continues to be positive for Mitzie Hunter and negative for Josh Matlow. Hunter is now in third while Matlow is now in fourth place despite previously being in first in weekly tracking,” Valentin said.

It is a drop of 12 percentage points from the first survey conducted by Liaison Strategies, in which he had 23 per cent of decided voters choosing him as their mayor.

Brad Bradford is fifth with 10 per cent of support, followed by Ana Bailao with eight per cent. It is the stark opposite of Friday’s Mainstreet Research poll, which had Bailao as the runner-up behind Chow.

Among all the people surveyed, 28 per cent have yet to choose a candidate to support.

“Among all voters some candidates have shown relatively little movement, while the undecided has steadily declined,” Valentin said.

Candidates are expected to ramp up their campaigns as the June 26 election day draws near.

METHODOLOGY

The poll was conducted for the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada. It is based on a survey of 1,311 Torontonians through Interactive Voice Recording between May 17 and May 18.

The respondents were screened for voter eligibility.

The margin of error is +/- 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.