The shine has gone off Doug Ford a little this year. And his government has some miles on the odometer. While Ford has surpassed the expectations of his critics in the past, time and circumstances may be catching up.

Liberal chances will have a lot to do with how Ford comes across over the next couple of years. It’s very difficult for an Opposition Leader to break through the content clutter - especially in provincial politics. In most cases, the only way an Opposition party wins, is when the governing party has put itself in defeat mode.

I don’t think that moment has arrived in Ontario just yet, but if it does, the Ontario Liberal Party has plenty of potential, and not a great deal of baggage.

Earlier this month we asked a sample of 1608 people across Ontario “In the next provincial election, the Liberal Party of Ontario will have a new leader…depending on who the leader is, how much chance is there that you would consider voting Liberal?”

• 21% said there is “zero” chance. That leaves a lot of potential supporters out there.

  
  

• 14% said “for sure I will” vote Liberal, another 22% said there’s a very good chance, and 24% said there’s a decent chance. Let’s consider those three categories the Liberal potential voter pool, and leave aside another 19% who said “not much of a chance, but not zero”.

A 60% voter pool is healthy enough. Over the last fifteen provincial elections the average share of vote of the winning party was 41.5.

Over the same 15 elections, the average share won by the Liberal Party of Ontario was 35.1%. The Liberals won 5 of those elections, with an average of 42.5%

When asked “If the next Ontario election came down to a choice between electing a Liberal government led by Navdeep Bains or a Conservative government led by Doug Ford, which would you prefer?”, a narrow majority (54%) said they would prefer the Bains/Liberal outcome, while 46% would prefer another Ford win.

Our voting intention data indicates a dead heat 37-37 with the NDP well back at 16%. These numbers would mean the Conservatives shedding 6 points from last year’s election (43%) and the Liberals gaining 7 from their 30%.

So far out from an election, these voting intention results really only provide a couple of broad signals.

First, the Conservatives are not as popular as they were. In our data, Ford personally is 41% positive/41% negative for a net 0. Not great, but far from a political death knell.

Second, the Liberal Party has room to run, and certainly enough voters willing to consider voting Liberal for the party to have a clear shot at victory.

It is normal to see some transference of federal political mood onto provincial politics, and we see evidence of that in our numbers. The brand Liberal is now less toxic to conservative voters (half of federal CPC voters say there is some chance they could vote Liberal provincially, and federal NDP voters are far more inclined to want a Bains-Liberal win (76%) than another Ford victory.

In short, Ontario voters are not enthusiastic about their current government, but aren’t bursting with anger about it either. It’s more like they think something better is possible, and they’ll be open to hearing what the Liberals have to say, and measuring their next Leader against Doug Ford.