Former Toronto mayoral candidate Doug Ford holds a slight lead over Christine Elliott in the Progressive Conservative race, a new poll of party members suggests.
Mainstreet Research asked more than 17,000 PC Party members between Feb. 21 and Monday to rank their top three choices for party leader.
The survey found 36.7 per cent of respondents preferred Ford as their first choice, while 32.7 per cent picked Elliott.
Twenty per cent of respondents indicated Caroline Mulroney was their first choice and eleven per cent of respondents picked Tanya Granic Allen.
“The chances of Ford and Elliott winning are that of flipping a coin,” Mainstreet President Quito Maggi said in a news release. “There are so many intangibles that will impact the outcome of this race which makes it difficult to predict.”
The poll included former leader Patrick Brown as an option as he had not yet dropped out the race while it was conducted.
Respondents who picked Brown were transferred to their second choice.
PC Party members will vote from March 2 to 8, on a preferential ballot. The results will be weighted in electoral ridings with more than 100 members voting to maintain the impact of members in sparsely populated areas.
With Brown left in the race, he maintained a slight lead of 25.6 per cent of respondents, versus 25.4 per cent apiece for Ford and Elliott.
Looking at each respondent’s second ballot choice, which will prove valuable as the field is whittled down until one candidate has at least 50 per cent of the vote, 20 per cent respondents who picked Ford said Elliott was their second choice.
More than 39 per cent of respondents who picked Elliott said Mulroney was their second choice, while 37.4 per cent of Mulroney’s supporters said Elliott was their second choice.
Fifty-two per cent of Granic Allen’s supporters said Ford was their second choice.
The pollsters conducted 1000 simulations of the race using the data they collected.
In the simulations, Ford won 52 per cent of the time while Elliott won 48 per cent of the time.
But Maggi says the mystery factor in the race is how many party members take the time to formally register themselves for the online vote.
While there are likely more than 100,000 legitimate party members in the province, it is unlikely all or even a majority of them will take the time to register themselves for the vote.
“Each campaign is in a race to register as many members as they can before this Friday,” Maggi said. “The campaign that can register the most members and them to vote will win.”
The poll was conducted using smart interactive telephone response, targeting cell phone and landlines, with a margin of error of 0.7 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
