Ontario Liberals close in on Ford's PCs: Poll
· Toronto Sun
OTTAWA — With this week marking the one year anniversary of the 2025 provincial election, the lead the Doug Ford Progressive Conservatives enjoy over the leaderless Liberals is contracting.
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Numbers released Wednesday by Liaison Strategies put the Ontario PCs at 40% of the decided and leaning vote — just shy of the Ontario Liberals at 36%.
Liaison Strategies Principal David Valentin said the results show a significant consolidation of the Liberal vote, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area — and continue an ongoing trend of eroding support for the long-serving Premier Ford.
“In October, the PCs were at 47%, now they are at 40% — every month we have seen them shedding one or two points,” he said.
“If the trend continues, they will soon be tied with the Liberals or trailing.”
All of this is happening, Valentin pointed out, while the Liberals are in the process of selecting a new leader.
2025 was Ontario Liberals’ annus horribilis
Former Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, who resigned as Mayor of Mississauga in early 2024 to take the reins of the provincial Liberals, didn’t fare well in her new job.
Crombie led her party to a third-place finish in the 2025 provincial election, losing her seat in Mississauga-Cooksville to Conservative candidate Silvia Gualtieri — sister to Mississauga-Lakeshore MPP Rudy Cuzzetto and mother-in-law to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.
Crombie, with the support of the party’s executive council, chose to stay on as leader, but announced her intentions to resign after only garnering 57% support at her party’s annual meeting this past September.
Ottawa South MPP John Fraser currently serves as interim leader.
The Tories enjoy leads across the province with the exception of the 905 and 416.
The Liberals see 37% support in the 905s compared to just 35% support for the Tories, but the chasm widens in the 416 — where the Liberals lead the liberals by nine points, 40% Liberal support against 31% support for the Tories.
NDP fortunes continue to slip
The Ontario NDP, which in 2025 won 27 seats and formed the official opposition for a record third-straight term, continue to see its approval in Ontario falter.
The Ontario NDP reliably remain in third place with 17% of the vote, falling from the 22% support they commanded two years ago.
The only area where NDP support is stronger than the Liberals is south-central Ontario, where their 28% support beats the Liberals’ 21% support.
The 905s are also where NDP support is the weakest, where they’re pulling just eight per cent — nearly half of that district’s undecided vote.
The Green Party sits at 5% support, while other parties only managed to garner 2% of decided and leaning voters.
Ford’s approval rating low
Despite province-wide support for the Ontario Tories, voters don’t seem very happy with the direction the province is going — or the job being performed by Premier Doug Ford.
Only 30% of those polled approve of the job Ford is doing, compared to 66% who do not approve, and the 4% undecided vote.
Northern Ontario, southcentral Ontario and the 416 are where Ford is admired the least, with disapproval ratings above 70%.
When asked if Ontario is heading in the right direction, only 31% agreed with that sentiment, while 60% said the province is heading in the wrong direction.
Nine per cent said they weren’t sure.
The poll was conducted among a sample of 1,000 Ontarians between Feb. 20 and Feb. 22, 2026, with a margin-of-error of ±3.1%, 19 times out of 20.