On toeholds

Following up on yesterday's post, the New Democrats' campaign ended up reaching only the first level of historic results - featuring the party's first-ever general election wins in Quebec and Newfoundland to go with a broader seat base than ever, but unfortunately not matching the late-campaign polls when it came to the NDP's share of the popular vote. So what does that mean for the future?

The good news is that the results raise a strong opportunity to build off the party's new geographic base. From CBC's national map, the NDP's wins in Churchill and Northern Ontario have at least given the NDP responsibility for opposing Harper in a greater proportion of the country than any other party.

And that should be far from the limit for geographic growth. With seats now in NDP hands in Alberta and Newfoundland, the door should be wide open for the NDP to start building new regional bases there as well, to go with a work in progress in Quebec which nearly pushed more seats into the New Democrats' column.

On the downside, the results for southern Ontario in particularly look to be a significant disappointment. Instead of turning the region into a three-way race, the NDP largely remained at least a few points behind the second-place Libs in the country's richest area for seats. Which not only means that the New Democrats took less ridings than one would have hoped for this time out, but also that it'll take some more movement to start pushing races the NDP's way in future elections.

In addition, even the national share of the vote has to be something of a mixed blessing - particularly when even an increased share won't mean additional subsidy money due to a decline in absolute votes.

All in all, last night's results offer only some moderate gains on the NDP's road to power. And the success of the rest of the journey depends on how effective the party's new MPs are at gaining ground for fellow New Democrats from their newly-won strongholds.