We are witness to a tale of two troubled first ministers.

Both shuffled their cabinets this week in search of ministerial renewal. Both have hit the road in the new year looking for love, or a little less loathing.

Justin Trudeau faces an increasingly cranky press corps, hence his town hall tour where prime ministerial selfies are still in high demand. Kathleen Wynne faces ever-decreasing poll numbers, and the premier is more often shunned than asked for selfies.

The story of Wynne’s decline and Trudeau’s resilience is a study in contrasts.

Ontario’s economy keeps getting stronger. The latest data shows robust growth as workers flee Alberta’s oilsands for the industrial heartland, and Wynne prepares to balance her next budget.

Canada’s economy keeps getting weaker. The Bank of Canada remains nervous, and Trudeau now talks of perennial deficit financing.

Never mind the PM. No matter the comparator, Wynne loses out.

Take her main opposition rival, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative leader, Patrick _____ (can you fill in the blank?).

The latest Forum Research poll shows half of all voters (49 per cent) don’t know enough to have a view of him. Notwithstanding not knowing him, he merits a 28-per-cent approval rating (oh, and his surname is Brown).

The NDP’s Andrea Horwath does better (36-per-cent approval) but worse (the party she leads still trails in most polls). Four in 10 Ontarians still don’t know her, eight years after Horwath became leader.

By contrast, everyone knows the premier. And almost everyone dislikes her, the latest surveys suggest.

Wynne merited a 13-per-cent approval rating, “the lowest value we have ever recorded for a sitting premier,” Forum noted dryly.

That late-November poll showed the Tories would win a majority government with 43 per cent of the vote, leaving the Liberals and NDP tied at 24 per cent each. After 13 years of Liberal rule voters are clearly looking for change, but looking isn’t the same as deciding.

Sometimes voters leap before they look — see Rob Ford and Donald Trump. Other times, fear trumps loathing — remember Tim Hudak’s loss to the hated Liberals?

Most of the time, people hate hydro: Ontario Hydro, OPG, Hydro One — you name it, you change the name, you privatize it, they still demonize it.

Now, more than ever, electricity is a lightning rod for Ontarians. Electricity bills are rising rapidly outside the big cities, for a variety of reasons (no, it’s not due entirely to wind turbines or a couple of cancelled gas plants). It’s not just that rates are high (after being kept unsustainably low for years), it’s the rapidity of the rise that enrages ratepayers — and even urban voters are complaining.

Electricity has become Ontario’s political meme, spreading across the province and drowning out any upbeat Liberal agenda for infrastructure or education or child care. Wynne is also facing heat over new carbon taxes added to fuel and natural gas prices (via cap and trade) on Jan. 1.

Against that backdrop of bad news and hydro blues, how does the premier bounce back from her record-low approval ratings? In the new year, the Liberals are hoping to counter the negative pocketbook stories with their own good news government giveaways.

Recognizing the growing political problem, Wynne has announced major rate rebates. Realistically, she will never win the day on hydro; the goal is merely to cut her political losses (at the cost of billions of dollars to the treasury).

If the Liberals can somehow smother those hydro fires, they hope to talk up their talking points: Tuition freezes and rebates (which add up to “free tuition” for families with modest incomes), expanded child care and transit building will all gather steam in the months ahead, but won’t electrify voters the way electricity rates do.

Wynne’s ambition as premier is to be transformational. Now transactional is what counts, with pocketbook issues pre-eminent.

For all the bad news, the Liberals point hopefully to one provincial poll that got little attention last September, just days after the government announced its hydro rebate. In that Ipsos survey, the Liberals captured 40-per-cent voter support, with the PCs at 35 per cent and the NDP at 20. Asked who would make the best premier, 28 per cent chose Wynne, not quite so far behind Brown (35 per cent) and Horwath (37 per cent) — suggesting she is down in the polls, but not necessarily out.

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What does all this mean? When it comes to politics, polling tells us everything and nothing (just ask Justin Trudeau, written off before the last federal campaign). With a provincial election looming in mid-2018, the only certainty is that it can’t get any worse for Wynne — though the odds are it won’t get much better.

No one can predict the political future, but history offers its own lessons. More on that in my next column.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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