A brief guide to the Canadian elections

Today Canadians go to the polls for their fourth general election in seven years, after Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government fell to an unprecedented motion citing it for contempt of Parliament.

The story of the campaign has undoubtedly been the meteoric rise of Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party. Until now, the centre-left NDP had been the third party nationally — and, in fact, fourth in number of seats, due to the regional strength of the Bloc Québécois. However, they have enjoyed a steady surge over the past three weeks, with the election-eve polls putting them on about 31 per cent — more than 10 points ahead of the previously second-placed Liberal Party, as the graph below shows. Observers in this country have, unsurprisingly, drawn parallels with the Cleggmania that preceded our own general election. As with the Lib Dems then, the question for the NDP today is whether they can translate this new-found popular support into electoral success.