So close

There seems to be little doubt that the NDP is picking up momentum going into election day. But the Star's Kenneth Kidd points out that it won't take much more movement for the NDP to achieve unprecedented results tomorrow:

It wouldn't take a lot of votes to give the party its long-cherished breakthrough on the road to replacing the Liberals as an alternative to the Conservatives. Unlike the other parties, the NDP doesn't need a huge jump in the popular vote before it starts raining MPs.

That's because NDP support tends to be concentrated in parts of Ontario, a swath of British Columbia, and chunks of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Or, as (Jamey) Heath puts it: "If you want to vote NDP, chances are really good that your neighbours do, too."...

(In the NDP's best-case scenario), the Conservatives, though still out front, slip in the polls to something like 34 per cent on election day, and the Liberals fail to gain, sticking at 26 per cent. And the NDP? Well, if Layton's strategy works, the New Democrats clock in between 19 and 22 per cent...

The Conservatives would end up with a minority government of 134 or so seats, followed by the Bloc with around 67. And the NDP and Liberals? In a dead heat, each with 50-something seats. That would put the New Democrats tantalizingly close to doing what the Labour party did in Britain in the 1930s: supplant the Liberals as the natural alternative to the Conservatives.

Obviously those numbers would require most of the NDP's serious challenges to go Layton's way. But unlike PMPM's apparent best-case of finding some way to cling to power by shifting the polls by 10 points in a day, they're at least a reasonable possibility given the current trends. And these numbers would leave the Bloc with nowhere to go but down, Harper with no chance of pushing a neocon agenda through a minority Parliament, and the NDP with an extremely strong position both to set the agenda in the next Parliament, and to make a run at government an election down the road.

We're not far from what could be the NDP's best-ever outcome in terms of both seats and long-term policy implications. All the NDP needs now is for its natural voters to remember their justified concern about PMPM's trustworthiness, and to cast their votes for the party which can be believed when it talks about progressive values.