A bitter rivalry between Ontario’s major party leaders always gets down and dirty at this time of year.

Tuesday’s annual plowing match pits Premier Kathleen Wynne against Opposition leader Patrick Brown and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath. It’s fair to say most Ontarians wonder if any of them is up to the job — be it steering a plow or the province.

Whether on a farmer’s field or the campaign trail, their performances are as dispiriting as they are unpredictable. The same can be said for their standings in recent public opinion surveys.

Polling is like plowing. Previous standings don’t help you divine the results of the harvest — agricultural or electoral — in advance.

The latest Forum Research survey, published in Sunday’s Star, suggests Brown’s Tories are headed for a majority government landslide, burying the Liberals like yesterday’s night soil: His Progressive Conservatives are perched at 45 per cent, leading Wynne’s Liberals, who are languishing at 25 per cent, with the NDP stuck at 23 per cent.

Partisans and pundits tend to focus on Wynne’s dismal personal approval rating, now mired at a record low 16 per cent. Can the premier dig herself out?

The numbers are not good for her, and people are starting to ask if she has reached the point of no return. The Tories keep hinting she may not last as leader to fight the next election, though Wynne’s formal announcement Monday of her 2018 campaign team suggests she is readying for the fight.

Either way, the numbers are not especially good for her competitors either.

Brown’s approval rating is 27 per cent, hardly honeymoon territory. Nearly twice as many people, 48 per cent, say they don’t know, and another 25 per cent disapprove of the job he’s doing as opposition leader — perhaps reflecting a series of stunning flip-flops on sex education.

Horwath boasts the best personal approval rating of 36 per cent, though slightly more people (38 per cent) don’t know, and another 26 per cent disapprove. But her personal popularity doesn’t translate into winnability, given her party’s perennial third-place position.

When the three rivals are rated on who would make the best premier, only 19 per cent choose Horwath — little different from the 15 per cent that Wynne gets (the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points, so they are statistically tied). Brown gets a more respectable 25 per cent, but the big winner by far is none of the above: 41 per cent of Ontarians don’t know or don’t like any of them for premier.

That’s not a poll any politician can be particularly proud of. Like the plowing match, the survey results are set in shallow ground — a snapshot in time 20 months from voting day.

The enviable PC lead in party preferences masks a remarkable volatility in voter intentions. Polls are notoriously unreliable between elections, when few Ontarians are paying attention. Most people are “don’t knows,” or prefer to park their votes with the opposition until the campaign begins.

The Liberals were doing even worse in May of 2015 (bottoming out at 24 per cent), before bouncing back up, and then down again. Redistribution could also change the equation, if additional seats in urban areas of population growth help the governing party weather its remarkable unpopularity in rural ridings.

Ontario is also osmotic, easily influenced by political currents in Ottawa — notably the profound decline in the federal NDP, the baggage still borne by the Conservative Party of Canada, and the enduring popularity of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals.

Despite Wynne’s recent dismal harvest, can she harness some of Trudeau’s magic? The PM’s warmth wins people over, whereas the premier’s rough edges can leave voters cold. While some voters give the premier points for authenticity, empathy is not necessarily her thing.

Are we at a tipping point, the point of no return for Wynne? Do the PCs under Brown have irreversible momentum, despite all the voters who remain “don’t knows” — and his unknowable policies?

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No one knows. Polling, like plowing, yields an unpredictable harvest.

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

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