Ontario Politics: Liberals Gain Lead (41%, +4 Points) While Conservatives Slide (34%, -6 Points)

Toronto, ON - According to a new Ipsos Reid survey of 1000 Ontarians provided to Global News and CFRB, the John Tory led Conservative Party has slid -6 points in the polls since a survey conducted this past May (now with 34% of the decided votes) and fallen well behind the front-running incumbent Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal Party (41%, +4 points).

Howard Hampton and the NDP continue to trail further back of the pack (19%, +2 points), while Frank de Jong and the Green Party garners a modest percentage of total votes (5%, unchanged).

Thirteen percent of Ontarians are undecided about which party and leader they would vote for.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll provided to CanWest/Global and CFRB fielded from October 11-19th, 2006. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1000 adult residents of Ontario was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 177 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult population of 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 the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual population of Ontario according to Census data.