McGuinty Liberals (38%) End 2009 Seven Points Down from Where they Started

Toronto, ON - Ontario's McGuinty Liberals will start 2010 off seven (7) points behind where they started (45%) in 2009: 38% of voters would choose the provincial Liberal's compared to the Progressive Conservatives under new leader Tim Hudak at 34%, down 2 points since October but up 5 since January 2009, according to an Ipsos Reid poll conducted in December on behalf of Canwest News Service and Global Television.

For the relatively new Leader of the NDP, Andrea Horwath, 15% of decided voters would vote for the NDP, down 1 point since an October 2009 sounding and from the outset of that year.

The Green Party, under the new leadership of Mike Schreiner who took over the helm of the provincial party in November 2009, begins 2010 with the same level of support that was given the party at the outset of 2009: 10%

Contributing to the slide in Liberal fortunes in 2009--in a year that could only be described as "McGunty's Annus Horribilis" were the recession that caused widespread job losses and a historically high deficit, scandals at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and e-Health, which resulted in resignation of high-ranking public servants and a cabinet minister. 2009 was capped with an acrimonious passage of the widely-unpopular Harmonized Sales Tax which comes into effect in July, 2010.

But all of this comes with many months to go until the next scheduled election in October 2011. As such, 2010 will be a year for the Opposition parties to pepper the government and prepare their approach leading up to the election in 2011, and for the government to try and stem the slide and get back on track.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted exclusively for Canwest News Service, Global Television and CFRB Radio from December 8 to 13, 2009. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 845 adults living in Ontario was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1773.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult population living in Ontario been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure that the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Ontarian population according to Census data.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
John Wright
Senior Vice President
Ipsos Public Affairs
(416) 324-2002
[email protected]

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