Ottawa Mayor Polls Put Leiper 4 Back, but His Chances Fall to 7%

A Quorus Consulting poll of all respondents shows incumbent Mark Sutcliffe at 28% and Kitchissippi councillor Jeff Leiper at 24%, a 4-point gap, with about a third of voters undecided. Neil Saravanamuttoo polled 7% and Alex Lawson 4%, according to the Quorus MetroVox report. A Mainstreet Research poll released the same day, with later fieldwork, showed a wider gap among all respondents. Ottawa votes Monday, Oct. 26. Over the final three days before the vote, Polymarket traders cut Leiper's chance of winning the "Who will win the 2026 Ottawa mayoral election?" market from 13% to 7%.

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What Do Ottawa Mayoral Election Polls Show for Jeff Leiper and Mark Sutcliffe?

The Quorus poll was fielded Oct. 8-15 and published Oct. 19. Mainstreet Research also published a poll on Oct. 19, with fieldwork Oct. 14-16 (n=638). It was commissioned by the Lawson campaign but released publicly. Both figures below are for all respondents.

Poll	Fieldwork	Sutcliffe	Leiper	Lawson	Saravanamuttoo	Undecided
Quorus	Oct. 8-15	28%	24%	4%	7%	about one-third
Mainstreet Research	Oct. 14-16	35.1%	25.5%	10.3%	8%	about 19%

Sources: Quorus; Mainstreet Research.

Quorus's June figures of Sutcliffe 54% and Leiper 25% were decided-voter numbers, so they cannot be compared directly with the October all-respondent figures. On a decided-voter basis, Quorus's comparable numbers were 54-25 in June and 42-35 in October.

The poll and the market measure different things. The poll records stated voter preference at one point in time. The 7% figure on Oct. 26 is traders' implied probability that Leiper wins the market. A candidate can trail by 4 points and still carry a win probability well below 50%, so the two numbers are not expected to match.

Resolved Oct 26, 2026

Who will win the 2026 Ottawa mayoral election?

This market settled on October 26, 2026, so nothing below is tradeable. These are the last prices each venue published before settlement, not live quotes.

Compare every venueClosing prices, not an entry point

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Why Did Jeff Leiper's Odds Fall to 7% When the Poll Gap Is Only 4 Points?

The decline of about 6 percentage points left Leiper at 7%, the lowest price in the period tracked. We could not establish what caused the drop.

The case that 7% looks low rests on the Quorus numbers. A 4-point deficit, with roughly a third of the electorate undecided, leaves room for the race to move in either direction. Leiper told CBC News the contest will be "extremely close" and said he is taking nothing for granted. His campaign manager, Stephen Yardy, said internal analysis pointed to gains in advance voting, especially among students.

The evidence on the other side is also concrete. Quorus's fieldwork ended 11 days before the vote, the margin of error was not included in the material reviewed for this article, and Mainstreet's poll had Sutcliffe ahead by about 10 points. An internal Abacus Data poll released by Sutcliffe's campaign reportedly put Saravanamuttoo narrowly ahead of Leiper for second place. Internal polls released by a campaign are not independent. Leiper has also faced criticism in debates for declining to commit to limits on future tax increases.

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Are There Polls for the Ottawa Mayoral Race, and What Happens Oct. 26?

Public polling exists but is thin. Quorus and Mainstreet are the published benchmarks, and the Abacus figures come from a campaign rather than an independent release. Read side by side, the October polls show Leiper trailing, while the market prices a Leiper win as roughly a 1-in-14 outcome. Neither figure is a forecast of vote share.

Late in the campaign, Leiper pitched a recreation centre and year-round sports dome for Orléans and Navan, to be financed through Ontario's Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund. He said he wanted to balance it with a similar promise for Kanata, as detailed in CBC's infrastructure platform cheat sheet. CTV News Ottawa has a guide to voting logistics.

The market resolves on the official result of the Oct. 26 vote. Live prices for every candidate are on the Ottawa mayoral election market page. The open question is how undecided voters break, and only the count will answer it.