Mayor David Miller’s support among Toronto voters has “plummeted” to the point where a majority disapprove of his performance, and he would lose in a race against possible challenger John Tory, a new poll shows.
The dismal poll numbers, which also suggest the incumbent, two-term mayor would lose to Deputy Premier George Smitherman, come as Mr. Miller struggles to contain the political fallout of a crippling strike of municipal workers.
But the collapse in Mr. Miller’s support — from 69% four years ago to 43% today — is not just an expression of frustration with the stopped garbage collection and closed public services.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos-Reid for the National Post, Global Television and CFRB radio, was done largely in advance of the strike, with about 100 out of 803 respondents polled after it began.
“It probably is worse now, but really what it’s dealing with is an incumbent mayor who’s being defined by the issues, as opposed to him defining the issues,” said John Wright, senior vice-president of Ipsos-Reid. “It’s clear that there’s more than just a strike here that’s causing unrest.”
On issues such as the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way project, expanded bike lanes, the future of the Gardiner Expressway, and the request for federal stimulus money to fund new streetcars, Mr. Miller has failed to define his political image, Mr. Wright said.
“All of these things may have a framed purpose, but he doesn’t seem to champion them. There seems to be a vision that is piecemeal to the city, and as a result you get chewed up by piecemeal,” Mr. Wright said. “You always kind of knew, despite the boosterism, where [former Toronto mayor] Mel Lastman was on things. This is a very different mayor than Mel Lastman.”
A 57% majority say that Toronto is headed in the wrong direction under Mr. Miller, the first time in years that this number has been so “blatantly high,” Mr. Wright said.
The comparison with Mr. Tory, who has not declared his candidacy but is widely supported as a potential centre-right challenger, also offers a stark contrast to the results of the 2003 mayoral election.
Mr. Miller beat Mr. Tory in that vote to win his first mandate by 43% to 38%. Mr. Tory went on to lead the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, but led them to electoral defeat against Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in 2007, a loss that was largely blamed on Mr. Tory’s unpopular plan to fund religious schools.
Mr. Tory declined to comment on the poll yesterday. It suggests he would beat Mr. Miller today by a 7% margin — 34% to 27% — although a plurality of voters, 39%, say they would vote for neither man.
Mr. Smitherman, MPP for Toronto Centre and a senior member of Mr. McGuinty’s cabinet, has dismissed speculation that he will enter the race, but Mr. Wright said he has been touted behind the scenes as a “hard-driving liberal with a constituency in the core of Toronto that could step forward. We’re talking about the deputy premier of the province who represents a downtown riding, so we’re not going to dismiss that.”
The poll suggests he would beat Mr. Miller 28% to 21%.
Mr. Wright said that Mr. Miller’s vote seems to be “cannibalized” by Mr. Smitherman’s, in that there is a large constituency — including the large gay population in the downtown riding represented by Mr. Smitherman, the first openly gay Ontario MPP — that would go with Mr. Miller over Mr. Tory, but with Mr. Smitherman in the picture, “it actually melts the mayor’s numbers down, [due to] the gay vote moving to Smitherman.”
“This is a mayor [Mr. Miller] who, depending on the [opposing] candidate, falls from 43% to 21%. That’s a long fall,” Mr. Wright said. “So I think he’s very vulnerable.”
Things are worse for Mr. Miller among older, taxpaying, property owners, who are demographically more likely to vote.
People aged 18-34 were most likely to approve of the mayor’s performance, at 58%, but that support withers among people aged 35-54 (46%) and aged 55 and over (23%)
A 56% majority of people with university degrees support the mayor, compared to 34% with a high school diploma, and 23% with no high school diploma.
The poll paints a picture of a two-term mayor who is not capitalizing on the power of incumbency, and could be vulnerable to the same kind of political imagery — a broom to sweep out City Hall — that he famously used to such effect after first winning the office in 2003.
“He’s worse off than he was in the last election, and that is something to be concerned about if you’re contemplating a third term,” Mr. Wright said. “I mean, people will even wonder whether or not he’s going to stick around. These numbers are not good, but he’s got time to do something about it.”
The strike seems to offer as much opportunity as risk on this front, in that it focuses public attention on the mayor’s response, which gives the public something concrete and immediate to judge him by.
“This is a mayor who has chosen not to be in the public eye a lot. He doesn’t have regular scrums with the media. He tends to work behind the scenes as opposed to in front of the scenes, and that may have hurt him. He’s not really well defined,” Mr. Wright said. “I’m not sure you see or hear where [Mr. Miller] is for sure, and politically speaking, you’ve got to be out there and
championing something, or you’re going to be eaten.”
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