Poll Gives Ontario Liberals an 11-Point Lead

Here's your coffee-spitter of the morning: luckless Dalton McGuinty has rocketed ahead of the PCs in the latest poll.

Every now and then, there's a poll that's patently off base, which could very well be the case behind a new one showing that the Ontario Liberals boast an 11-point lead over Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives. Or, it could be that voters shied away en masse from the PCs in the run-up to the writ drop this week. We just don't know – that's sort of the deal with polls. This latest poll from Harris/Decima found that Dalton McGuinty's Liberals garnered 40 per cent of respondents' support, compared to 29 per cent for the Tories and 24 per cent for the NDP. Previous polls usually had Hudak leading by between five and 10 per cent, with both the Liberals and NDP closing the gap, but this is the first poll in some time (our somewhat educated guess is that it's been about a year) that shows the Liberals out in front, let alone with enough of a lead to secure a majority. NDP support remains consistent with what other recent polls have found, with leader Andrea Horwath enjoying some sustained support in the wake of Jack Layton's death.