​With all eyes on the Progressive Conservative party, new data from polling firm Campaign Research suggests that the Liberals and the NDP are going to have a hard time toppling the Tories in the race to form a majority government at Queen’s Park in the June 7 election.

Campaign Research had already found that the Tories were looking at substantial support in the 2018 election regardless of whom they ended up choosing as their next leader. In an online survey conducted from February 9 to 11, they found that Christine Elliott would fare best as PC leader and would win 46 per cent of the popular vote, compared to 41 per cent under Caroline Mulroney and 39 per cent under Doug Ford. All three leaders would have double-digit leads over the Liberals and the NDP.

Additional data provided to TVO.org by Campaign Research shows that the Liberals and New Democrats are not only behind, but face a lower ceiling on their potential support.

“Basically, half of voters are either in the PC camp or accessible to them, and half of them are absolutely not,” says Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research. “For the Liberals, two-thirds are inaccessible — there’s no way voters will consider them right now — and only a third are really supporters or accessible to them.”

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Nearly two-thirds of all voters have simply ruled out voting for the Liberals entirely, leaving them only 36 per cent of reachable voters. Even assuming that Premier Kathleen Wynne can present a popular budget and run a strong campaign, thereby growing her support, the low ceiling leaves the Liberals well short of their 2014 vote share. Capturing 100 per cent of reachable voters would leave the Liberals with only slightly more than the Tories received in 2011, when they were still consigned to the opposition benches.

The story is only slightly better for the New Democrats, who could garner as much as 39 per cent of the vote share, or slightly more than the Liberals received in 2014, if they were able to mobilize everyone who says they’re willing to consider Andrea Horwath’s party. But here, too, that could be harder than it sounds: the NDP is struggling to attract young voters, relative to the Liberals.

Meanwhile, Campaign Research finds that the Tories are sitting (relatively) pretty: while large swaths of the province have ruled out voting for the Liberals or New Democrats under any circumstance, 26 per cent of voters say they’ll vote PC no matter what. The comparable numbers for the Liberals and NDP are 13 and 11 per cent, respectively.

“The PCs are basically double that of the Liberals,” Yufest says.

The Liberals seem to have secured their position with young voters with a raft of policies aimed at people 25 and under: increased financial assistance for college and university, free prescription drugs for people 24 and under, and a $14 minimum wage (and the promise of $15 in January, if they’re re-elected). The catch is that young voters are notoriously unreliable: voters 18 to 24 years old showed up in relatively large numbers in the 2015 federal election — youth turnout hit 57 per cent that year — but prior to that, turnout levels had been relatively anemic, in the high 30s and low 40s.

The Tories, meanwhile, are scoring high marks with older voters, the group most likely to actually turn out and vote in large numbers: 41 per cent of men over 55 say they’ll vote Tory and nobody else; 32 per cent of women over 55 say the same.

Part of the result in 2018 is going to depend on whether the Ontario Liberals can repeat the success of their federal cousins in engaging new voters and creating a surge in friendly turnout. Another part, inevitably, will rest on how the results of the Tory leadership race affect that party’s standing.

The Tories won’t just be anointing a winner, after all: they’ll be sending four other candidates (and, more importantly, their supporters) home disappointed. That’s bound to dissipate some of the energy that’s driving the party’s popular support at the moment. Every party has to deal with that after a leadership race, but most parties have months or years to bandage bruised egos and mend fences. The Tories will go immediately from a leadership decision on March 10 to an election campaign with writs dropping on or about May 9 with voting day on June 7.

“You have three relatively well-known candidates running to replace Patrick Brown,” he said. “That’s what’s driving a lot of the numbers we’re seeing right now. Once the leadership is over, things will normalize, and we’ll have a clearer picture … we just need the noise of the leadership race to go away.”

Oh, and at some point between now and election day, they’ll probably want to update that campaign platform.

Yufest acknowledged that the party will face some challenges after the leadership campaign ends, but doesn’t see a massive drop-off in voter support on the horizon.

“Would it soften? No doubt, it will soften somewhat,” he says. “But regardless of which leader takes over, all three will be in majority territory.”