Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals have jumped into a first-place tie with Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives at the expense of Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats, a new poll has found.

The Liberals and Conservatives are each at 36 per cent while the NDP has slipped further behind to 24 per cent, with Mike Schreiner’s Green Party at 4 per cent, according to the Forum Research survey for the Star.

“You can see what a difference two or three points can make. The Liberals probably aren’t as afraid of an election as they were,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said Sunday.

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The findings are significant because Wynne’s fledgling government could be toppled after Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s budget is delivered Thursday and Ontario plunged into an election as early as June 6.

Hudak maintains his party will vote against the spending plan while Horwath, who holds the balance of power, wants to wait and see if the Liberals meet her conditions for support.

Some of the NDP leader’s demands appear popular with voters. Her call for a reduction in auto insurance rates, which Sousa is expected to deliver this week, was mentioned as the top budget priority by 31 per cent of respondents.

More than half of those surveyed — 55 per cent — don’t want an election, which would cost $92 million and come less than two years after the October 2011 campaign. But 37 per cent want a vote now while 9 per cent aren’t sure.

“Whoever causes the election is going to pay for it. The Liberals are not going to get blamed for it,” said Bozinoff, noting that as Wynne accommodates the New Democrats, the Grits benefit.

“As long as the NDP give the Liberals all their good ideas, it’s going to continue. They need a popular idea that the Liberals can’t go for. They really need to differentiate themselves better,” he said.

Forum’s interactive voice-response phone poll of 1,133 people, conducted Friday, is considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Because of voting concentration, Bozinoff calculates that if the poll results held up, the Liberals would win a majority of 59 seats in the 107-member legislature while the Tories would win 38 and the NDP, 10.

Including Speaker Dave Levac, the Liberals currently hold 51 seats, the Tories 36 and the NDP 18, and there are two vacancies.

This latest poll reveals that Wynne’s left-leaning Liberals are continuing to siphon support mostly from Horwath’s New Democrats. Since taking over from former premier Dalton McGuinty in February, she has been slowly reversing the Liberals’ fortunes.

In the Forum snapshot of March 28, the Tories had 35 per cent and the Grits had 32 per cent, with the New Democrats at 26 per cent and the Greens at 5 per cent.

On March 4, the polling firm found a statistical three-way tie with the Liberals and Conservatives at 32 per cent apiece and the NDP at 29 per cent, while the Greens were at 5 per cent.

But Horwath remains the most popular of the three leaders.

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She has a 43 per cent approval rating with 32 per cent disapproval and 25 per cent of respondents unsure.

In contrast, Wynne has a 38 per cent approval and a 39 per cent disapproval, with 23 per cent of those surveyed uncertain.

Hudak, meanwhile, continues to languish with a 27 per cent approval, a 51 per cent disapproval and 22 per cent unsure.

“Horwath’s challenge is to translate her personal popularity into support for her party because Wynne seems to have reached a ceiling on her approval rating while Hudak just can’t seem to break through,” said Bozinoff.

“The NDP has to be taking a very close look at things,” he said, emphasizing “it’s going to be very hard for the NDP to explain” if they trigger an election even though the Liberals meet their budget requests.

“The New Democrats have to be very, very careful.”

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