Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne is deeply unpopular with Ontario voters, a new poll suggests, while Patrick Brown remains an unknown quantity to half the province almost 11 months after he took charge of the Progressive Conservatives.

The province-wide Forum Research Inc. survey found that while the Liberals’ support is resilient and about one third of respondents back the party, just 20 per cent of Ontarians approve of the job Wynne is doing as premier, and 64 per cent disapprove.

Brown’s numbers were much better. About one quarter, or 26 per cent, said they approved of his performance, while only 22 per cent disapproved.

Brown’s party was also leading in voting intentions, with 40 per cent saying they would vote for the PCs if the election were held today. Just 30 per cent said they would vote Liberal, while 24 per cent would back the NDP. Those numbers were largely unchanged from a Forum Research poll released one month ago.

But in what could be a troubling sign for the Brown, 52 per cent of respondents said they didn’t know enough about the 37-year-old PC leader to form an opinion about him. The NDP’s Andrea Horwath was the most popular of the three main party leaders, with an approval rating of 35 per cent. Twenty-six per cent of respondents disapproved of her performance.

“The PCs are strongly outperforming their leader in appeal, which could present a problem in an election situation. Patrick Brown needs to make himself more known to the electorate, turning some of the ‘don’t knows’ into approval,” said Forum president Lorne Bozinoff.

“Horwath, on the other hand, continues to outperform her party in approval, which is also not ideal for an election.”

Bozinoff noted that despite Wynne’s abysmal popularity figures, “the Liberal brand is still relatively strong.”

Translated into seat counts, the voting intention results show that if the election were held today the PCs would win a narrow majority in the 107-seat legislature with 57 seats, compared to 26 for the Liberals and 24 for the NDP. The next election is still two years away, however.

Brown has been PC leader since last May, when he took the helm after Tim Hudak stepped down in the wake of the party’s comprehensive defeat to the Liberals in 2014. Brown is the only current provincial leader who has yet to benefit from a profile-boosting election campaign.

He remains something of a mystery even to some seasoned political observers, who struggle to reconcile his record as a socially conservative backbench Conservative MP with his more recent willingness to embrace positions not normally associated with Ontario’s right. At the PC convention earlier this month he surprised some in his own party by expressing his support for carbon pricing.

The poll of 1,225 randomly selected Ontarian adults was conducted by interactive voice response on March 23. Results are considered accurate within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Where appropriate, the data has been statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure that the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest Census data. Forum houses its poll results in the Data Library of the University of Toronto political science department.

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