Article content continued

It’s rolling countryside that has been painted Conservative blue since 1968, with a brief four-year Liberal interregnum in the 1980s.

Read more …

[/np_storybar]

It doesn’t much matter to many voters whether the swell is red or orange — talking to voters on the doorsteps in three Montreal-area ridings, it is clear that the vast majority want a new federal government but two out of three said they have not yet decided whether to back the Liberals or New Democrats.

Some may have been just being polite to the candidate. Many more echoed the sentiments of Annie Picard, who was unloading her car in the Laval riding of Alfred-Pellan.

“I’m undecided between NDP and Liberals. But for sure not Conservative. I prefer (NDP leader Tom) Mulcair but I don’t feel informed. It’s a long campaign, we have two kids and we’re tired,” she says.

The sense is many voters are open to both the Liberals and NDP but are waiting to see how the election campaign unfolds, and which opposition party can break from the pack.

It suggests we are going to see some dramatic shifts in support late in the campaign.

That said, while there are early signs that the Liberals are inching upward in Ontario, there is not yet that sense in the neighbourhoods of Montreal.

The NDP is not circling the wagons. If anything, the hope is that the party will win-high profile ridings held by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and former astronaut Marc Garneau.

Both are in tough fights in a city where the NDP is now the default party of choice for francophone voters.