Selinger is the most popular candidate with the public

A poll conducted for the Free Press by Probe Research suggests that Selinger is the most popular candidate among the general public. The poll was conducted prior to Swan's concession, and concluded that Selinger was the favoured candidate for 27% of Manitobans, compared with 12% for Ashton, 9% for Swan, and 3% for poor John Boehm (remember him?) That leaves a lot of respondents unaccounted for, of course. On the article there's a comment by "wolfrom" saying this means Selinger comes second to "none of the above", but this is unfair; looking at the details on Probe's own site (hat tip to Endless Spin Cycle for the link) we see that only 8% said "none of these", with the remaining 41% simply saying "don't know" or refusing to answer. Big difference.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that the general public is not selecting a leader; the NDP membership is (via delegates, of course). It does, however, mean that Selinger, if he wins, has a good chance of winning the public owner, contrary to some fears. Looking further at the results from the Probe site, Selinger is the favoured candidate among supporters of all the major parties; interestingly, Swan and Ashton do slightly better among Liberal and Tory supporters than among the general population. Furthermore, Selinger came out on top in every demographic category examined in the poll (broken down by sex, age, income, and education).

Of course, the $64,000 question is how this will sway people in the remaining delegate selection meetings (and in uncommitted delegates). It can't hurt Selinger's chances, at least.