PC platform doesn’t ‘excite’
Poll suggests Tories didn’t get desired bump from launch of ‘People’s Guarantee’
Ontario voters do not yet seem to buy into Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown’s “People’s Guarantee” election platform, a new poll suggests.
The Campaign Research survey shows Brown’s Tories have slipped slightly to 34 per cent — from 35 per cent last month — while Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have inched ahead at 35 per cent compared with 32 per cent in November.
Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats were 22 per cent — one percentage point lower than their 23 per cent in the previous survey — while the Greens led by Mike Schreiner were at 7 per cent, down from 9 per cent.
That suggests Ontarians are in for a tightly contested June 7 election.
Using an online panel of 1,495 Ontario voters, Campaign Research polled between Monday and Wednesday. A probability sample of that size would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The survey was conducted after the Nov. 25 release of the PC manifesto, which promises to reduce middleincome taxes and hydro bills while increasing money for mental health and improving child care tax breaks.
Asked if the Tories got a bump in the tracking poll from their platform launch, Campaign Research CEO Eli Yufest said: “No, not at all.”
“It’s kind of surprising because they were able to captivate a large audience,” he said Friday.
Indeed, using techniques pollsters employ to determine brand awareness for corporate clients, the firm showed the online panel a photograph of the cover of the “People’s Guarantee” featuring a beaming Brown.
His name, the party logo and the key promises from the platform were removed in order to gauge awareness.
An impressive 29 per cent of respondents said they had seen the image, and 52 per cent identified Brown.
“That’s good penetration — a really good, strong breakthrough,” Yufest said.
“But what they achieved in terms of breakthrough and recall, they fell really short on doing anything meaningful to draw people to their camp, obviously,” he said.
Yufest noted 40 per cent of those surveyed disagreed that the image increased their interest in the person in the picture; 41 per cent disagreed that it increased their interest in the party; 40 per cent disagreed that the image made the person seem different from other politicians; 58 per cent agreed the image could have been for any politician; and 45 per cent disagreed with the statement that they would like to have a beer with the person shown.
“They weren’t able to excite the electorate. Perhaps their policies weren’t resonating all that much. Perhaps the image itself . . . didn’t excite a whole lot of people. It didn’t make (Brown) more relatable,” he said.
“While they did well in terms of getting coverage, they weren’t able to excite people to consider voting for him.”
Ironically, all the attention on the Conservative platform appears to have helped the governing Liberals because it focused attention on an election that’s six months away, Yufest added.
“It actually got people thinking about Patrick Brown and the PC party and the Liberal party, and it moved more people to the Liberal party. So what they saw and what they heard they didn’t get particularly excited about.”
There are still major challenges for the governing party, however.
“Kathleen Wynne remains terribly unpopular. I don’t think the fact she was out of the country (on a twoweek trade mission to China and Vietnam during the polling period) has any meaningful impact on the numbers, though it could be out of sight, out of mind,” the pollster said.
“There’s no doubt that the Liberal brand is still strong — so strong that in spite of the fact that the leader fares so poorly, people are still willing to consider voting for the party . . . over the PC party,” he said.
“The focus for the Liberals should not be Kathleen Wynne; the focus for the Liberals should be the Liberals.”
Wynne’s personal approval rating was 19 per cent, her disapproval was 67 per cent and 14 per cent didn’t know.
Brown has a 29 per cent approval, 29 per cent disapproval and 42 per cent were uncertain.
Horwath is still the most popular of the three major party leaders with 33 per cent approval, 24 per cent disapproval and 43 per cent were unsure.
“It’s basically the opposite of the Liberals. They like the leader, but they just don’t like the party,” Yufest said of the New Democrats.
“They have a leader that’s pretty well-liked . . . but the problem for her is that she’s got a party that people just don’t like. The electorate, for whatever reason, isn’t ready to give the NDP serious consideration,” he said.