Two public opinion polls published this morning concerning the voting intentions of Franco-Ontarians are cause for delight for the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberal Party receives the award for the strongest defender of the French fact in the province, but this does not seem to be reflected in the voting intentions of Francophones in Ontario.
According to an Ipsos Canada poll commissioned by Radio-Canada Ontario, the parties are tied in voting intentions. 31.4% of Franco-Ontarian voters believe that Doug Ford would be the best premier, even though only 12.9% of them think that his party is best placed to defend the interests of the Francophonie. 30% of voters believe that it is rather the Liberals who are best placed to do so.
Matthew Conway, a former adviser to Francophone Affairs Minister Caroline Mulroney, admits reading the survey results with a “big smile” on his face. “In November 2018, we could never have imagined this,” he says. The Ford government then made cuts to services in French. He canceled plans for a French-language university and eliminated the position of independent French-language services commissioner, prompting thousands of Franco-Ontarians to take to the streets to demonstrate.
Three and a half years later, the anger of the times may not galvanize Francophone voters: access to services in French is the seventh most important issue (5.3%) of Franco-Ontarians, far behind the cost of living, the economy and the management of the health system. “The fact that the issue is in seventh place shows that a page has been turned on the file,” thinks Matthew Conway. The latter attributes the turnaround to the work of Caroline Mulroney.
Friday, after slipping that he was “obsessed” with learning French, Doug Ford praised the work of his minister. But the Prime Minister has also gained popularity since the start of the pandemic in 2020, and he is running a good campaign, assesses Pierre Cyr, who was an adviser to Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. On the other hand, the performance of Liberal leader Steven Del Duca – the best prime minister according to 14.6% of Francophones – weakens that of some of his candidates.
And on the ground?
Steven Del Duca was in Ottawa this morning in front of Francophone candidates from the region when he replied that he had 13 days left in the campaign to look good with Franco-Ontarians. In the afternoon, the Liberal leader traveled to the predominantly bilingual riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, where his candidate Amanda Simard is in a tight fight against the Conservative Stéphane Sarrazin, a former mayor of the region.
A Mainstreet poll commissioned by the QP Briefing website and published this morning reveals that the two candidates are tied in voting intentions. The results of the Radio-Canada poll partly explain the one in the riding, thinks Matthew Conway. If the campaign took place in 2019, Stéphane Sarrazin would have started it with a ball at the foot. Now, “he has a record to defend for Francophones,” says Matthew Conway.
Former Liberal political adviser Pierre Cyr warns, however, that polls can be misleading in the riding. Public polls on Franco-Ontarians like those published today are rarely conducted, but political parties do them internally, he says. And those conducted in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell usually show tighter results than those of polling day, says Pierre Cyr.
The former Liberal strategist explains that many civil servants live in the riding and do not speak to pollsters by invoking a reservation right. In addition, nearly 11,000 electors, or approximately 10% of the electorate, are unilingual Francophones and therefore do not respond to certain pollsters. “It’s a nuance in the National Capital Region,” says Pierre Cyr.
The Liberals learned their lesson in 2014, he says, when internal polls put candidate Grant Crack behind conservative Roxane Villeneuve Robertson. Pierre Cyr, who was working in the central management of the Liberal campaign at the time, was dispatched to Glengarry-Prescott-Russell to help the local team during the last week. Grant Crack was finally elected at Queen’s Park with 49.7% of the vote.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.