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If Selinger loses, he will naturally forfeit his position as Canada’s least popular premier. The Manitoba leader has held down the bottom for a prolonged period, with an approval rating of less than 19%. Four in five respondents think he’s done a lousy job.

The new least-popular premier is almost certain to be Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberals were re-elected with a majority less than two years ago and have been on a steady downward slide ever since. Judging by recent soundings, a significant number of the people who voted for Wynne’s Liberals in 2014 now wish they hadn’t. Only one in five Ontarians think she’s doing a good job. The new opposition leader, Patrick Brown, is much more popular, even though voters concede they know very little about him.

How Wynne managed to seize the bottom for herself is no mystery. The party can’t seem to keep from tripping over itself. Its partial privatization of Hydro One, the provincial power distribution company, was deeply unpopular. The Liberals went ahead anyway because they need the money: the latest budget projected provincial debt will soon top $300 billion and Finance Minister Charles Sousa is desperate to meet his pledge to balance the budget in time for the next election in two years’ time. The province signed unpopular wage contracts with teachers, while admitting it spent millions on expenses for union negotiators they were opposing at the negotiating table. An ugly by-election in Sudbury uncovered a panoply of Liberal dirty tricks. Criminal charges have been laid against two former Liberal aides for their alleged role in wiping clean computer records related to the Liberals’ $1.2 billion gas plant scandal. And an effort to upstage Brown backfired when his Tories easily won a byelection in Jim Flaherty’s old riding of Whitby despite spirited Liberal campaigning and a visit by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.