Based on the poll that came out two weeks ago, I wouldn't be surprised to see Smitherman in the lead this time around. Between Thompson dropping out and the volume of undecideds from the last poll, we currently don't know how 1/3rd of voters will vote (if you believe the polling numbers, which I don't, but when combined with past voting behaviour they can be a bit useful for argument's sake...). That number of "unknown" votes now exceeds Ford's polling results. I can't imagine many declared Thompson supporters jumping on the Ford bandwagon (since we know from prior elections that Toronto centrist's tend to lean to the left), which means Smitherman only needs around 15% of her supporters to jump to him (assuming the rest go to Pants/Rossi) to be in a dead heat with Ford (this is based on my analysis from
here.) I don't think Smitherman in the lead would surprise anyone though.
Then it's full steam ahead from there. I think most of us have hypothesized that the undecideds were just struggling with which of the "not-Ford" options to go with. Considering how stable Ford's support as been, people's opinions of Ford haven't changed at all over the last few months (you either like him or you don't) and it's going to be very difficult for him now that there are two left-centre candidates and two right candidates, knowing that even with record turnouts in the suburbs, the left-centre will have around 75,000 more votes spread over 2 candidates on election day. I believe the best Ford can hope for is for Pants to start picking up steam or for Rossi to drop out, otherwise Smitherman will take it far more comfortably than people would have expected before Thompson dropped out.
This is my own little excel model I've come up with and it's not scientific at all, but for those curious, using the data from prior elections combined with the polling thus far and urban/suburban voter turnout estimations, I'm predicting this as the final outcome (assuming no strategic voting for Rossi or Pants supporters):
Smitherman 34.3%
Ford 31.2%
Pants 14.9%
Rossi 12.5%
Other 7.5%