---
title: "Sutcliffe campaign releases internal poll showing incumbent leading Ottawa mayor race"
description: "The Sutcliffe campaign commissioned and paid Abacus Data to survey 1,000 Ottawa voters in late September. Among decided voters, the poll put Sutcliffe at 52 per cent, with Leiper, Saravanamuttoo and Lawson all in the mid-teens."
canonical_url: "https://voche.me/on/ottawa-2026/news/sutcliffe-campaign-internal-poll-2026-10-14"
last_updated: "2026-10-17T18:36:41.082Z"
---

The Sutcliffe campaign released an internal poll on October 14, 2026, showing incumbent mayor Mark Sutcliffe leading the Ottawa mayor race by a wide margin among decided voters, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Abacus Data, which the Sutcliffe campaign commissioned and paid for, surveyed 1,000 Ottawa voters online in late September 2026. Abacus chief pollster David Coletto conducted the work.

## What the campaign's poll found

Among the 755 respondents who said they had decided on a candidate, the poll put [Mark Sutcliffe](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates/mark-sutcliffe) at 52 per cent, [Jeff Leiper](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates/jeff-leiper) at 16 per cent, and [Neil Saravanamuttoo](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates/neil-saravanamuttoo) and [Alex Lawson](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates/alex-lawson) both at 14 per cent. Another four per cent said they would vote for one of the other ten candidates on the ballot.

Among the 534 respondents Abacus classified as likely voters, the campaign's poll showed Sutcliffe at 50 per cent, Saravanamuttoo at 17 per cent, Leiper at 16 per cent and Lawson at 13 per cent. Among all 1,000 respondents, the campaign's poll put Sutcliffe at 39 per cent.

Twenty-three per cent of all respondents said they were undecided.

## How to read these numbers

The poll was commissioned and paid for by the Sutcliffe campaign. Abacus used an online panel rather than a probability sample, so a true margin of error cannot be calculated. Abacus said a comparable probability sample of 1,000 respondents would carry a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

An independent Nanos Research poll, commissioned by CTV News Ottawa and conducted October 4 to 8, 2026, put Sutcliffe at 49 per cent among decided voters, Leiper at 31 per cent, Saravanamuttoo at 12 per cent and Lawson at seven per cent. That poll used a randomly selected sample of 762 voters.

Voters can compare the four main candidates at [/on/ottawa-2026/candidates#mayor](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates#mayor). Advance voting is October 16 and voting day is October 26.

## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](/on/ottawa-2026/sitemap.md) for all pages.