‘Fake:’ Doug Ford slams poll suggesting he is Canada’s least popular premier

The Front Bench panel discusses the approval ratings of Ontario’s Doug Ford, Alberta’s Danielle Smith, and B.C.’s David Eby plummeting to all-time lows.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford shrugged off a recent poll suggesting his popularity has dipped as “fake” Tuesday, claiming he and his PC Party would win a fourth “massive majority” if an election were held today.

“I don’t like boasting and bragging, but if an election was held today – we’re at 41 per cent – we’d win a massive majority once again,” Ford said.

He claimed internal polling from his party, as well as other companies, tells a very different story than a number of publicly-released polls that show the PCs and Ford sliding in popularity.

A recent poll released by Angus-Reid showed Ford, sitting at 21 per cent approval among Ontario voters, the lowest approval rating among the premiers in Canada and his lowest-ever as premier.

Asked about it by a reporter Tuesday, Ford cast doubt on the credibility of the poll.

“They put this fake poll out, they poll the NDP and Liberal caucus,” he said.

He went on to attack the methodology for the poll further.

“I got a hold of their methodology once, folks. They went into a hardcore NDP neighborhood downtown. They didn’t do it across (the province). It’s little games, and then you guys run with it,” he told reporters.

While his party doesn’t share its internal polling, Ford said it makes sense they would win another majority.

“I’ll tell you the reason we’d win another massive majority. It’s because we’re creating jobs, we aren’t raising taxes, we’re putting money into people’s pockets. We’re seeing a great economic growth, folks,” Ford said.

Pollster defends research

According to the Angus Reid Institute, the online poll surveyed a randomized sample of 4,076 Canadian adults from June 7-11. That included 850 people in Ontario, the highest sample size of any of the provinces surveyed.

Respondents were drawn from a large-scale online panel developed to include Canadian residents in each of the 343 federal ridings in Canada and representative of the Canadian population by age, gender, family income, ethnic status and education, the institute says in its methodology.

In a statement Tuesday, the institute defended its research, saying it has has measured provincial premier performance approval for more than a decade, “without fear or favour,” on a quarterly basis.

“While it is not surprising for a premier with a comparatively low approval rating to express unhappiness with the data, we note that Premier Ford has at times been among the most approved-of provincial leaders in the country based on data from this same quarterly survey,” the statement read.

“We note he did not express a problem with Angus Reid polling then. Further, there is a difference between job performance approval measurement and vote intention measurement. We stand by our research and methodology.”

Recent polls show mixed results

Other recent polls have varied, with some showing Ford and the PCs losing ground to the rival Liberals and others pointing to a more favourable picture.

An Abacus Data poll released three weeks ago suggested the PCs would get 41 per cent of the vote if an election were held today, compared to 31 per cent for the Liberals and 17 per cent for the NDP. The same poll pegged Ford’s approval rating at 37 per cent.

Liaison Strategies released a poll in late April suggesting the PCs (36 per cent) and Liberals (38 per cent) would be separated by just two points if an election were held at the time. That poll came in the aftermath of a controversy over For Ford’s purchase of a private jet, which he has since sold off.

That same poll found Ford’s approval rating at 27 per cent.