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He’s also running third on questions of which leader would be best on the economy, provincial relations and foreign affairs. Singh is most strongly endorsed on health care, where 15 per cent say he’s best, but where he still trails Scheer and Trudeau.

In general, Canadians aren’t exactly enamoured of their federal party leaders.

The good news for the NDP is that it’s running ahead of its leader: One-fifth say it’s best to form government, which must be of some comfort to a party that’s known some high highs and really low lows.

Context is important: The most significant reference point for political watchers with shorter memories is the 2011 election in which the late Jack Layton’s “Orange Crush” carried the party to 30 per cent of the popular vote and 103 seats in the House of Commons.

His successor, Tom Mulcair, appeared poised to build on that momentum, peaking in the summer of 2015 at 36 per cent (in grasping distance of minority government) and statistically tying then-prime minister Stephen Harper as best prime minister. But it all came crashing down months later. Outmanoeuvred by Trudeau, the party lost 51 seats. Mulcair was drummed from his job less than a year later.

Yet the bad times have been far worse. A similar crest in popular vote around the 1988 election was followed by the cruel, bleak 1990s, when the party polled in the single digits, struggled for relevance in a five-party landscape and was reduced to about a dozen seats.

Today, at roughly 20 per cent, the party seems to be maintaining its core base. Because of its western, CCF roots, the NDP will always be able to play to a kind of anti-Ottawa, anti-élite populism in a way the Liberal Party never can. The question for Singh, his strategists and caucus is whether the party wants to simply be in play, to be the nation’s conscience, or whether it wants to aspire to the growth it enjoyed in the recent past.