You don't know what you're talking about. Chow is very popular city wide. It's mathematically impossible to get 50% in a poll without strong city wide support. Things aren't as cleanly divided as one is led to believe by all the talk about downtown vs suburbs. Even Ford got very close to winning several downtown wards -- and that's why he's going to lose this time around. He's made a lot of regretful voters out of those who did support him in 2010.
I can't find any downtowners willing to admit that they voted for Ford yet about 80,000 of them did. Ford won with 380,000 votes. That's a big chunk of his support that will no longer vote for him because he's openly rallied against them, insulted them and neglected their needs. Then you've got many reasonable people living in the outer city but are sick of Ford and embarrassed by how he's tarnished the city and tired of the circus and of the heavy cloud of negativity he's cast over Toronto.
Here's the math: if Ford can somehow keep his 300,000 outer city voters and Olivia Chow takes all of his downtown's 80,000 plus the die hard 95,000 Pantalone backers, who do you think is going to run away with the largest chunk of Smitherman's 290,000? Chow doesn't even need half of Smitherman's votes to run away with the election. Do you think more than half of voters who refused to vote for Ford and held their nose to support Smitherman instead are actually going to go to Ford?
Out of the candidates looking to run, none of them will split this into a 3 man election day choice. I don't think even Stintz (if she were to run, but she's not going to) would make it to the end. John Tory might have a good chance but it looks like he's staying out of it. Traditionally, an election where an incumbent is running will almost always end with only 2 candidates actively competing by election day.
I'm ever more convinced that Ford can't pull this off.
