Through the spring and summer, as Rob Ford climbed steadily in the polls, his rivals consoled themselves that Toronto wasn't really paying attention yet. Once the race got going in earnest after Labour Day, voters - especially moderate downtown voters - would wise up and swing to a more sensible candidate. The new Nanos Research poll turns that conventional wisdom upside down.
The notion that voters would turn off Mr. Ford once they got a good look at him in the bright September sun simply has not panned out. To the contrary, the more they see of him, the more they like him.
Since the last Nanos research poll in June, his share of popular support among all voters has nearly doubled, from 17.8 per cent to 34.4 per cent. Among decided voters, he is at an eye-popping 45.8 per cent, fully 24 points ahead of second-place George Smitherman.
Far from rallying to stop the Ford-loving suburban hordes from seizing the city, downtown voters are joining the assault in growing numbers.
That Mr. Ford should have 62 per cent of decided voters on his home turf of Etobicoke is no surprise. That an unabashedly suburban candidate who promises to make the car king and get rid of downtown streetcar lines should be leading in the old pre-amalgamation City of Toronto is astounding.
Mr. Ford has moved beyond his conservative, suburban base and is appealing to a broad range of Torontonians with his call for less waste at city hall, better customer service and more respect for city taxpayers. He is even tied with left-leaning Joe Pantalone among decided NDP voters. Among voters who prefer the Liberals, he stands just behind Mr. Smitherman.
The flailing attempts of other candidates to stop the Ford uprising have failed utterly. Despite Mr. Smitherman's attempts to climb on the city hall-bashing bandwagon by announcing a freeze on taxes and a war on waste, his support has stood stock still since June. Similarly, Rocco Rossi's look-at-me proposal to tunnel a new Spadina expressway into downtown appears to have gained him nothing but derision. His support languishes in the single digits.
Mr. Ford, by contrast, has undeniable, seemingly inexorable momentum. In February, when he was getting ready to announce his run for mayor, an internal poll put him in third place. By April, he was a solid second to Mr. Smitherman. By June, he was in a dead heat with Mr. Smitherman. In August, two polls put him well ahead for the first time. Even his week from hell in August, when his 1999 Florida pot bust came to light and he made skeptical noises about immigration, didn't slow him down.
Though there are still five weeks to go - as long as some provincial or federal campaigns - Mr. Ford has what pollster Nik Nanos calls a "commanding" lead. To lose now, he says, "Rob Ford has to blow up."
Ford being Ford, that is always possible, but so far he has been listening to his handlers, sticking to his stop-the-gravy-train message and trying not to be drawn into slanging matches with his opponents. The one-time gadfly is now running a front-runner's campaign, short on appearances where he can be grilled by the media and announcements that others can attack.
How can he be stopped? The obvious thing is to start an anything-but-Ford movement, consolidating forces among those - and there are still many - who think he'd be hard-pressed to govern Orillia, much less Canada's largest city. But who is to lead it? Mr. Smitherman once looked like the obvious guy, yet he is not catching on with voters. Mr. Pantalone is doing better in the latest Nanos poll, but it's still hard to picture him as mayor. The other two, neither with any experience of elected office, are long shots.
Mr. Ford owes his rise to a clear message and a fed-up public, but it also has a lot to do with the alternatives.
Marcus Gee