Health, Economy and Jobs, Lower Taxes Poised to Be Top Ballot-Box Issues in Upcoming Ontario Campaign

Toronto, Ontario, September 15, 2017 — Health, the economy and jobs, and lower taxes are poised to be the top ballot-box issues in the upcoming provincial campaign in Ontario, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News.

The poll reveals that healthcare is the top issue influencing how Ontarians are likely to vote next Spring, with more than four in ten (44%) saying this issue is among their top three. The economy and jobs (34%), and lower taxes (34%) are issues that hold equal importance in the eyes of Ontario voters, also placing in the top three, with lowering energy costs (31%) a close fourth. Rounding out the top-ten most-important issues include: debt repayment and balanced budgets (16%), education funding (14%), crime and public safety (14%), increasing the minimum wage in Ontario (14%), integrity in government and its leaders (13%), and preventing climate change (13%).

The relative importance of each issue varies for supporters of the major parties:

• For Liberal voters, the top-five issues are: healthcare (44%), the economy and jobs (41%), lower taxes (26%), lower energy costs (21%), and a tie between education funding (16%) and the minimum wage (16%).
• For Progressive Conservative voters, the top-five issues are: healthcare (45%), lower taxes (44%), lower energy costs (36%), the economy and jobs (32%) and debt repayment and balanced budgets (27%).
• For NDP voters, the top-five issues are: healthcare (45%), the economy and jobs (38%), lower energy costs (35%), lower taxes (28%) and education funding (20%).

To understand how these top issues might influence voting intentions, respondents were asked to rank the performance of the Wynne Liberals on their chosen top three most-important issues. While an Ipsos poll released yesterday showed that Premier Wynne and the Liberals have an overall approval rating of 32%, on some files of importance to Ontarians their approval ratings are much higher; on some files their approval ratings are much lower.

The following chart shows the Wynne government’s approval ratings for the top-ten issues identified by Ontarians.

This chart demonstrates that, in general, the incumbent Liberals perform stronger on issues of less importance to Ontarians (such as the minimum wage increase and preventing climate change), while many of the more important issues, such as the 3rd (lower taxes), 4th (lower energy costs) and 5th (debt repayment and balanced budgets), have much lower approval scores.

The chart below plots the relative importance of each issue to Ontarians, and the performance of the Wynne Liberals on each issue, underscoring that the Wynne Liberals tend to perform better among issues of lesser importance to Ontarians. Stated another way, Ontarians are placing more importance on issues where the government is underperforming.

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 8 and 11, 2017, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 800 Ontarians aged 18+ from Ipsos' online panel was interviewed online. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±4.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Ontarian adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Darrell Bricker, PhD
CEO, Ipsos Global Public Affairs
+1 416 324 2001
[email protected]

About Ipsos

Ipsos is an independent market research company controlled and managed by research professionals. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has grown into a worldwide research group with a strong presence in all key markets. Ipsos ranks third in the global research industry.

With offices in 88 countries, Ipsos delivers insightful expertise across five research specializations: brand, advertising and media, customer loyalty, marketing, public affairs research, and survey management.

Ipsos researchers assess market potential and interpret market trends. They develop and build brands. They help clients build long-term relationships with their customers. They test advertising and study audience responses to various media and they measure public opinion around the globe.

Ipsos has been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1999 and generated global revenues of €1,669.5 ($2,218.4 million) in 2014.