Bombastic, penny-pinching Councillor Rob Ford has quickly surged into second place in Toronto’s mayoral race, within striking distance of frontrunner George Smitherman, according to a Toronto Star-Angus Reid poll.

“Rob Ford has reshuffled the deck,” mostly at the expense of a stalled Rocco Rossi, said Jodi Shanoff, senior vice president of Angus Reid Public Opinion.

The online poll of 413 Torontonians, conducted between last Thursday and Monday, puts Smitherman at 34 per cent support, followed by Ford at 27 per cent; Joe Pantalone at 14 per cent; Rossi at 13 per cent; Sarah Thomson at 7 per cent; and Giorgio Mammoliti at 3 per cent. Two per cent chose other candidates.

The margin of error is plus or minus 4.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Despite the startling surge by Ford — best known for spending his own money on his council office budget and for embarrassing public outbursts — Shanoff cautioned that a full 51 per cent of respondents are undecided. With more than six months until the election, “the field is still open.”

“I get the impression that the slate (of candidates) has crystallized. That said, anything can happen, as this mayoral race has taught us so far.”

Ford, who registered as a candidate March 25 and drew 1,600 people to a campaign launch party the next night, has filled a vacuum in the race on the right side of the political spectrum, Shanoff said, while Smitherman and Rossi duke it out on the centre-right.

“Right now, Rob Ford is a serious contender,” she said. “Depending on what he has to say, and frankly how he deals with the attacks that undoubtedly are coming from Smitherman and others, those can either expose him for the not-so-serious candidate that the Toronto Life crowd takes him to be, or he can rise to the challenge and really galvanize his spot as a serious contender.”

The biggest disappointment in the numbers is for Rossi, a former executive and Liberal Party fundraiser who bounded from obscurity with a big speech and lots of policy in late January and has framed the discussion so far on issues including bike lanes.

His 13 per cent support is down by 2 points from a mid-January Star-Angus Reid poll.

“Whatever potential Rocco Rossi had to occupy the right, the wind has been taken out of those sails now,” Shanoff said. “Ford is there and Rossi’s numbers are really suffering. He hasn’t picked up any ground since his announcement.”

Smitherman’s support also dropped from the January poll, by 10 points, but Shanoff said the pugnacious former deputy premier won’t be surprised, given the relatively quiet, “powder-dry” nature of the campaign so far.

“He’s in a very safe position and this, compared to the 44 per cent we had him at a couple of months ago, doesn’t really signal that the wheels are coming off.”

That Smitherman’s campaign manager quit during the polling period is “inside ball” and likely had no effect on the poll, Shanoff added.

The bump that Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone seemed to get from Adam Giambrone’s withdrawal from the race — as another left-wing member of council — and from hiring renowned campaign manager John Laschinger is apparently real.

Early campaigning on a platform of continuing the legacy of Miller, who has focused on transit and environmental initiatives, boosted his support by 9 points since the January poll. He seems set for a “slow climb,” Shanoff said.

“He’s neck-and-neck with Rossi,” and, if some voters get spooked by the possibility of having to say “Mayor Rob Ford,” Pantalone is the most likely to get their votes.

“I think Pantalone is clearly different from Rob Ford in ways that the city hasn’t yet determined that George Smitherman is different from Rob Ford,” Shanoff said.

Lingering in the basement are Women’s Post publisher Thomson, campaigning on the expansion of Toronto’s subway system, and Mammoliti, a councillor with an usual platform that includes giving Toronto a red-light district and exempting senior citizens who earn less than $65,000 from property taxes.

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“Thomson is still at the bottom of the pack, regardless of how interesting she might be or how engaging her ideas,” Shanoff said.

Giorgio Mammoliti has had some strange ideas but they haven’t really gone anywhere, so I don’t think anybody has really picked up on him as a candidate. He’s pretty stalled at this point.”