The Pollcast: Breaking down the Ontario PC leadership race

The CBCPollcast explores the world of electoralpolitics,political polls and the trends they reveal.

With little more than three weeks to go before the Ontario Progressive Conservatives choose their next leader, there isn't much time for the candidates to make an impression on party members or for anyone to quite pin down who has the best chance of winning on March 10.

A lot of factors are at play, including who signs up the most new members in a short timeframe, what the pre-existing membership thinks about the candidates and how the preferential ballot will affect the count.

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So far, four candidates are running: Tanya Granic Allen, Christine Elliott, Doug Ford and Caroline Mulroney. The cut-off for entering the race and registering as a member able to vote is Friday.

Mulroney and Elliott both have a long list of endorsements behind them, including MPPs, MPs and nominated candidates. On Thursday, Mulroney boasted that she has raised $486,000. That puts her well ahead of the $70,000 that Ford said he had raised as of Wednesday.

But with a preferential ballot, equally-weighted ridings and such a short time frame, the ability to raise a lot of money is only one factor of many and though Mulroney claims to have raised nearly seven times as much money as Ford, she has done it from only 1.4 times as many donors.

It's a lot to sift through. To help do it,Pollcasthost ric Grenier is joined by Conservative insider Chad Rogers, a partner at Crestview Strategy.

Listen to the full discussion above or subscribe to the CBCPollcast here and listen to past episodes.

Follow ric Grenierand Chad Rogerson Twitter.