Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your election eve reading.

- Yes, the party polling is positive enough for the last day of the election campaign: Forum places the NDP at 33% (to the Cons' 35), Abacus Data places the NDP at 32% (to the Cons' 37), and Nanos finds the NDP at 31% and within 6 points of the lead - all signalling that a relatively small continuation of the campaign's growth trend can push the NDP into a clear first place.

- But perhaps the most telling numbers are the Nanos (warning: PDF) - which have Jack Layton not only overtaking Stephen Harper once again, but also reaching new highs overall and in trust and vision even after his opponents have launched about all the attacks and smears they'll be able to land during the court of the campaign.

- So will the NDP's popular support translate into an equally strong wave at the polls? It'll certainly help if voters take up Susan Delacourt's challenge to show at least part of the enthusiasm we put into building up our Olympic athletes into our democracy.

- That said, citizen engagement can't and shouldn't end at the ballot box. And Michael Posner's article on citizen panels offers one way of making sure that the kind of interest that's been building over the last month gets channeled into better policy outcomes.

- Finally, while I hope Colby Cosh is wrong in his seat projections, at least one of his points is well worth highlighting:

The shift to the NDP isn’t a result of appeals to particular economic sectors or social groupings that might vary from riding to riding. It is a personality-driven shift; a true mass movement. It is, in part, surely driven by universal human reactions to (Jack) Layton’s courage. He is fighting an election he might easily have avoided.

In fact...Layton faced a choice: fight an election now, which is a squalid and exhausting task for a healthy person, or take time to recover from cancer and a broken hip in relative peace. This was as a free a choice as can be imagined. Nobody on the face of earth would have blamed him for taking a break. He decided not to, and whether he did it for the advantage of the party or for the interests of the country, the decision boils down to “He did a brutally difficult thing because he thought it needed doing”. If you ask me, it’s pretty damn admirable even if he just thought selfishly that this was his best chance at being Prime Minister.

[Edit: moved strategic voting discussion to its own post.]