Former Ontario deputy premier is ahead of rivals on both voter support and favourable impressions.
Former Ontario deputy premier George Smitherman is the early leader in the race to replace David Miller as Mayor of Toronto, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll conducted in partnership with the Toronto Star has found.
In the online survey of a representative sample of 503 adults in the City of Toronto, 44 per cent of decided voters and leaners would support Smitherman if the election for mayor took place tomorrow.
City councillor Adam Giambrone is a distant second with 17 per cent, followed by federal Liberal Party organizer Rocco Rossi with 15 per cent.
Support is considerably lower for three other contenders (declared and hypothetical): deputy mayor Joe Pantalone (5%), and city councillors Shelley Carroll (5%) and George Mammoliti (also 4%).
Regardless of the distribution of decided support, still more than half of Toronto residents are undecided on who they will support in the October mayoral election (58%).
Impressions
Two-in-five Torontonians (42%) have a favourable impression of Smitherman. The proportion of favourable impressions is ten points lower for Giambrone (32%), who also has the highest proportion of unfavourable impressions (40%, one point higher than Pantalone). More than half of respondents say they are unfamiliar with Mammoliti (52%), Rossi (54%) and Carroll (65%).
The Tory Effect
In the aftermath of John Tory’s decision not to run for Mayor, Torontonians are almost evenly divided in their assessment of whether or not they would have supported him; with 40 per cent saying they would have voted for him had he run for mayor (including 54% of those over the age of 55) and 37 per cent saying they would have supported another candidate (including 45% of those aged 18-34).
More than a third of respondents who would have voted for Tory are now supporting Smitherman (38%), while 20 per cent are backing Rossi and 10 per cent would cast a ballot for Giambrone.
The City
A majority of respondents in the City of Toronto (54%) believe things are worse now than they were this time last year, two-in-five (39%) say things are about the same as they were a year ago, and only seven per cent report an improvement. The proportion of respondents who say the state of affairs has worsened is remarkably consistent across all gender and age groups.
Issue Landscape
Torontonians have three main concerns at this point: leadership (19%), municipal funding, services and powers (19%) and public transportation (18%). Unemployment is the fourth issue on the list (11%), followed by crime and public safety with seven per cent, and homelessness and the environment (each with three per cent).
Full Report, Detailed Tables and Methodology (PDF)
CONTACT:
Jodi Shanoff, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs
+416 712 5498
jodi.shanoff@angus-reid.com
