New Poll Devastating for Tory

Asked if there was any good news for the Conservatives in the poll, (Ipsos Reid's senior vice president John) Wright responded with a blunt, "No."

Liberal - 43% (+3)
Conservative - 33% (-4)
NDP - 17% (+1)
Green - 6% (-)
Undecided - 5%

*Bracket numbers are the change from the last Ipsos-Reid poll on Sept 18th.

This is "majority territory" and with less than two weeks to go, these numbers are as scary for John Tory as some of his campaign ads are for voters.

Liberal numbers have not been this high in an Ipsos-Reid poll since just after the party booted Ernie Eves out of government in 2003.

According to this poll, the Progressive Conservatives are getting decimated in Liberal and NDP-friendly northern Ontario and are letting key battleground ridings slip away.

According to DemocraticSPACE, the Conservatives are seeing the Liberals take leads in key ridings like Ottawa-West Nepean, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex and Ottawa-Orleans. Those are just three of the ridings the PC's had hoped to scoop up from the McGuinty Liberals.

Even more alarming for PC's... DemocraticSPACE is showing the Conservatives fighting to hang on to seats against Liberal and NDP challengers. Ridings like Oak Ridges-Markham, Oshawa and Mississauga South.

Tory's room for growth numbers are looking very poor as well.

A measure of the Conservative weakness is that the party now ranks last as the second choice of voters, behind even the Green party. The NDP has the greatest second-choice support at 26 per cent, but only 15 per cent name the Tories as their second choice.

"The Tories are at the bottom of the list," Wright said. "It's remarkable."

What has gone wrong for Tory? (Like anxious students on the first day of class, thousands of Ontarians raise their hand to answer that question.)

The Liberals and NDP appear on track to hold onto almost all of their key ridings, with only one government minister facing an uphill fight, according to DemocraticSPACE.

That minister is Education Minister Kathleen Wynne (Don Valley West) who is in a tooth and nail battle against PC Leader John Tory.

What if Tory doesn't win his own seat?

What would be a stronger statement -- the opposition leader not winning his own seat or every government minister voted back to Queen's Park?

The only good news for PC's is that the election wasn't held when this polling data was collected. There's still time to make a change. There's still time to turn the tide and there's still time to ... oh, I don't know, be a little bit more positive on the campaign trail!

The other good news for Tory is that it's not uncommon or career ending for an opposition leader to be handed a majority loss in their first election campaign, just ask Dalton McGuinty and look where he is tonight -- combing over some rather positive polling data.