The Liberals cannot form a government without at least half of Quebec's 78 seats. Today, they are nowhere near that target.

The story of the Liberals in Quebec has been one of steady decline since the ascension of Justin Trudeau to the leadership. His victory sent Liberal hopes aloft. Buoyed by gratifying poll numbers, respectable-to-large turnouts at party gatherings and the novelty of Mr. Trudeau's persona, federal Liberals felt they were back in the political game in Quebec.

National political arithmetic showed that Liberals had to be back in Quebec, or they would not be back in the country, at least not in the sense of competing for power. Liberals could, and would, do better in Atlantic Canada and Ontario than in the 2011 election, but gains there needed to be supplemented by renewed strength in Quebec.

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Quebec was a Liberal fortress – a long time ago. Since 1984, the Liberals have never carried the largest number of seats in Quebec in a federal vote. The closest they came was in 2000, their final election with Jean Chrétien, when the party won 36 seats compared with 38 for the Bloc Québécois.

Mr. Chrétien got a majority government despite taking only 36 seats in Quebec because his Liberals won a staggering 100 seats in Ontario. The Liberals have no chance whatsoever of approximating that result in the coming election, not with the right-of-centre forces no longer divided, as was the case in 2000.

When Quebeckers gave up on the Bloc in the 2011 election, they did not turn to the Liberals or the Harper Conservatives. Instead, an "orange wave" of New Democrats washed over Quebec. Liberals under Mr. Trudeau reckon that waves recede. They might have forgotten that waves come back, too.

This election will be the first since 1993 in which Quebeckers will be engaged in the issues and personalities of national politics in much the same way as other Canadians are. For more than two decades, from the creation of the Bloc to the 2011 election, Quebeckers withdrew from federal affairs, preferring to vote for the Bloc or, in the last election, the NDP, a party that had no chance of winning power.

With the Bloc moribund, and the NDP looking more credible across the country, Quebeckers seem to have decided that the orange wave should become an orange high tide. Which presents a different challenge to the Liberals.

Instead of positioning themselves as the obvious and best alternative to the Conservatives in Quebec, the Liberals now have to contain the New Democrats. If Quebeckers want to rid their province and Canada of the Conservatives, the NDP is the best-bet alternative for the largest number of francophone voters.

Mr. Trudeau thus far has failed to present a formidable team of candidates with resonance beyond their corners of Quebec. Given his inexperience, he needed a few high-profile candidates to make Team Trudeau. He also needed to advance some strong policy ideas, which until recently he had not.

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Indeed, by musing that the gun registry might have been a mistake and supporting oil pipelines, he found himself offside attitudes in his home province. Also, his support (with amendments) for Bill C-51, with its enhanced security powers for government, rested uneasily with his opposition to extending the military mission against the Islamic State. The Conservative government obviously supported both; the NDP opposed both; the Liberals appeared divided.

The Liberals' decline in Quebec might hurt the party outside the province among swing voters who could vote New Democrat or Liberal to defeat the Conservatives. If the Liberals cannot win Quebec, some of those voters might reckon they cannot, therefore, form the government, in which case the NDP becomes their default or preferred anti-Conservative option.

The Liberals will soon release an advertising campaign in Quebec. They can only hope it will do some good in a province where Stephen Harper gets attention by virtue of being the Prime Minister, and the NDP by virtue of having the largest number of seats and a well-regarded Quebecker as its leader. Although decried as illegal by the other parties, the New Democrats shifted some of their staff and budget from Ottawa to Quebec to help implant the party in the province.

Obviously, the Liberals have to improve in all regions of Canada to finish first among the big three parties. But they absolutely have to do much better in Quebec, and for the moment they are not.