New column day

Here, summarizing these posts as to how the opposition parties can set the stage for a minority Parliament by telling us what they'll do on the first set of confidence votes - and how we can make better voting choices if they fail to do so.

For further reading...
- Having mentioned the expected outcome of a Parliament in which two of the NDP, Libs and Cons are needed to support a government, I'll point out the seat projectors which have reached that conclusion - including Too Close To Call, Three Hundred Eight, the Globe and Mail's Election Forecast and David Akin's Predictionator.
- John Courtney rightly notes that political positioning can't trump convention. But when there's room for doubt as to how a convention should be applied (as in the Governor General's discretion as to which party should be called upon to form government), I'd think it's entirely appropriate to follow the expressed agreement of the affected parties. 
- Finally, Paul Wells makes the case that the main contest from here on in will be between Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau as the leading voice for change. Which isn't to say that Stephen Harper will escape serious questions, only that the appetite for new government is strong enough that the opposition parties won't have to do much work explaining why we need something different while pointing out what the Cons have done.