Ontario Liberal leadership front-runner Steven Del Duca won 56 per cent of the party’s weekend delegate elections, according to an official tally.

As first reported by the Star on Sunday night, Del Duca dominated the leadership election meetings held across the province.

That leaves the former cabinet minister poised to win a first-ballot victory at the Liberals’ delegated leadership convention in Mississauga on March 7.

Of the 2,084 delegates elected, 1,171 of them are supporting Del Duca.

That 56 per cent tally compares with runner-up Michael Coteau, the MPP for Don Valley East and a former minster, with 371 delegates or 18 per cent.

In third place was rising star Kate Graham, a former candidate in London North Centre, with 273 delegates or 13 per cent.

MPP Mitzie Hunter (Scarborough Guildwood), another former minister, won 130 delegates or 6 per cent.

Alvin Tedjo, a former candidate in Oakville North Burlington, won 72 delegates or 3 per cent.

Ottawa lawyer Brenda Hollingsworth won 25 delegates or 1 per cent.

“I’m humbled to learn today that 1,171 grassroots Ontarians have been elected to attend the leadership convention as part of my team!” De Duca enthused on Twitter.

Liberal president Brian Johns said he was heartened “to see so many Ontarians take time out of their weekends to participate in the future of the Ontario Liberal Party.”

“This speaks to the confidence people have in the leadership candidates and the party,” said Johns.

Only elected delegates and 640 “ex officios” – sitting and past Liberal MPPs, current Grit MPs from Ontario, and party brass – will be able to cast ballots at next month’s convention.

Del Duca tweeted that he was “thrilled that we are closing in on support from 200 ex-officio delegates.”

In total, there are 2,724 eligible delegates to the convention.

Coteau, Del Duca, and Hunter served in former premier Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet until the Liberals were toppled by Premier Doug Fords’s Progressive Conservatives in the June 2018 election.

“My vow is to continue to fight and champion the issues that are important to Ontarians,” said Hunter after a disappointing fourth-place delegate result.

While she and Coteau were among the seven Liberals to survive the PC landslide, Del Duca lost his Vaughan seat to Tory Michael Tibollo.

A new Campaign Research poll for the Star found the Liberals now tied with the Tories at 30 per cent apiece in public support with the New Democrats at 26 per cent and the Greens at 11 per cent.

Ford’s Conservatives are taking seriously the threat of the Del Duca-led Liberals.

Sources confide the Tories have spent tens of thousands of dollars on focus groups to determine how voters might view him.

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The first round of those group sessions was inconclusive, one senior Conservative said earlier this week.

“Nobody knew who the hell he was,” noted the Tory official, speaking on condition on anonymity in order to share internal discussions.

The Liberals governed Ontario under Wynne and her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, for almost 15 years starting in 2003.

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