A second consecutive poll shows John Tory with a big lead over Rob Ford and Olivia Chow.

The new poll by Forum Research is Tory’s best of the entire campaign. It suggests the results of a Nanos Research poll a week and a half ago were no fluke. It also suggests Chow’s popularity is plummeting in Scarborough, where she wants to build a light rail line rather than the subway extension preferred by Tory and Ford.

The Forum poll, conducted Monday, put Tory at 40 per cent, Ford at 28 per cent, Chow at 21 per cent, David Soknacki at 6 per cent. Four per cent said they didn’t know.

On Tuesday, Soknacki announced he was dropping out of the race.

In the Nanos poll conducted over the Labour Day weekend, Tory was at 35 per cent when undecided voters — 17 per cent — were included. Ford was at 23 per cent, Chow 21 per cent, Soknacki 3 per cent.

Tory had never before hit 40 per cent in poll that included undecideds. The election is on Oct. 27, seven weeks away.

Forum’s previous poll, in late August, triggered panic among residents opposed to Ford: it showed Tory leading the incumbent by only 3 percentage points, 34 per cent to 31 per cent. The new poll, in which Ford trailed by 12, suggests the mayor’s strong performance in the previous poll may have been a temporary blip.

Soknacki jokes openly of the “death watch” surrounding his candidacy. In a hypothetical three-candidate race without him, Tory had 41 per cent, Ford 30 per cent, and Chow 24 per cent, seizing much of Soknacki’s support.

Forum polled a hypothetical two-man race without the struggling Chow, who was the clear frontrunner through the spring and early summer. Tory won in a landslide, 57 per cent to Ford’s 30 per cent.

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The poll of 1,069 residents was conducted on Monday night using automated interactive voice response phone calls. The margin of error is 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Tory now leads in every region of the city. The poll suggests Chow has collapsed near-completely in Scarborough: her support was a minuscule 9 per cent, worse than the 13 per cent Ford got in East York and old Toronto.

Tory and Ford, the two candidates who want to replace the Scarborough RT with a subway extension to the Bloor-Danforth line, had 45 per cent and 38 per cent respectively. Chow and Soknacki are both advocates of the less-expensive LRT council originally approved.

Chow was at 31 per cent in Scarborough in an early-July poll in which she led the race by nine points. In Forum’s last poll, in late August, she fell to 19 per cent. It would be difficult for her to come back to win if she becomes a non-entity in an entire swath of the city.

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The poll is at least mildly encouraging for Soknacki as he thinks about whether or not to stay in the race. His approval rating jumped from 48 per cent in the late-August poll to 58 per cent — higher than Chow’s — and awareness of him jumped from 67 per cent to 78 per cent. His 6 per cent overall support ties his previous high, set in June.

Tory again had the highest approval rating, 65 per cent. Chow’s approval remained steady at 50 per cent. Ford’s was again a dismal 34 per cent. That figure suggests, again, that he has little room to grow: almost everyone who approves of him already plans to vote for him.

Tory led on every question Forum tested, including best able to handle the budget (Tory 36, Ford 33, Chow 16, Soknacki 10), best vision for the city (Tory 36, Ford 29, Chow 21, Soknacki 8), and best able to get councillors working together (Tory 42, Chow 22, Ford 20, Soknacki 6). Ford had led on the budget question each of the four previous times Forum had tested it.

Tory held a sizable lead with both men and women. With men, Tory had 41 per cent, Ford 32 per cent, Chow only 17 per cent. With women, Tory had 40 per cent, Ford and Chow 25 per cent each.

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