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“Obviously, the disarray of the opposition parties isn’t helping them,” Abacus president David Coletto said Tuesday of the Liberals and New Democrats.

That was a reference to both Crombie being forced to resign as Liberal chief on Sept. 14 after winning just 57 per cent at a leadership review and to Stiles securing just 68 per cent support from her party last Saturday.

Abacus surveyed 1,021 Ontarians between Sept. 12 and Sept. 17 using online panels based on the Lucid exchange platform. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Coletto noted the poll was conducted as Crombie’s leadership travails were playing out on front pages across the province, which he said contributed to the Liberals’ drop in support.

“If she had gotten an overwhelming vote of confidence from her party — and that was a positive story coming out of the weekend — the third party in the legislature would have got probably more attention than they ever did outside of an election campaign,” he said.

“The problem for them is that the story coming out was a negative one. It likely had the opposite effect. It could have been an important moment for them to maybe gain some momentum, to signal that the party’s united, they’ve got their leader, they’re ready to go. That clearly is not what Ontarians saw from that event.”

While the survey was done before Stiles’s leadership review, Coletto said the provincial party has been hurt by the national New Democrats’ ongoing problems since losing official party status in the House of Commons in the April 27 federal election.

“They’re having an immensely difficult time demonstrating to people that there’s a good alternative out there. The NDP is basically non-existent in many people’s minds at this point, so I think that that’s playing into it,” he said.

Even though Ontario’s economy is sputtering due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada and the unemployment rate was 7.7 per cent last month, he said Ford is still effectively tapping into the mood of the province.

“We know from other polling we do that affordability remains a top issue and I think, as we’ve seen in the past, Doug Ford is really good at signalling to voters that he understands what they’re going through,” said Coletto.

“That explains, really, the domination that we see of both Ford personally and the PCs in Ontario.”

Indeed, in terms of personal popularity, Ford was at 46 per cent positive, 33 per cent negative for a plus 13 per cent favourability rating, with 19 per cent of respondents neutral and two per cent unsure.

Stiles was at 28 per cent positive, 27 per cent negative for a plus one per cent rating, with 29 per cent neutral and 16 per cent uncertain.

Schreiner was at 23 per cent positive and 24 per cent negative for a minus one per cent ranking with 38 per cent neutral and 16 per cent unsure.

Crombie was at 29 per cent positive and 34 per cent negative for an overall minus five per cent, with 26 per cent neutral and 11 per cent uncertain.

Asked for their preferred choice for premier, 46 per cent said Ford, 18 per cent said Crombie, 12 per cent said Stiles, six per cent said Schreiner and 18 per cent didn’t know.

“Marit Stiles is still largely unknown to a lot of people despite a provincial election campaign in which it usually is the moment people get to know you,” said Coletto.

“Job one is raising her profile, trying to get her in front of people of all ages across all parts of the province.”