When Justin Trudeau, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, left a campaign rally last month, he received rock-star treatment. The crowd lay in wait, eager to shake his hand, snap a selfie, score an autograph or just get him to hold their children. Even as he reached his bus, people continued to call out “Justin!”

Mr Trudeau has been in the public eye since he was born on Christmas Day 1971 to a Liberal prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, and his much younger wife. Although the centrist Liberals are now Canada’s third party, Mr Trudeau fils—the country’s answer to the late John F. Kennedy junior—enjoys greater name recognition than Thomas Mulcair, whose leftist New Democrats (NDP) are the official opposition. Yet his fame is also a handicap. The centre-right Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, mock his “nice hair”, and say he “says things without thinking them through”.

Like all good political ads, it holds a grain of truth. Mr Trudeau is indeed relatively inexperienced. Before he became an MP for part of Montreal in 2008, he taught maths and French in a secondary school. He has been prone to gaffes: in 2013 he said he admired China’s control of its economy, and he made an ill-received joke about Russia and ice hockey during the Ukraine conflict. “He’s impulsive and he doesn’t like to be scripted,” says Huguette Young, the author of a recent biography.

Yet Mr Trudeau has appeared more polished in the lead-up to the federal election on October 19th. He has tried to compensate for his lack of gravitas by hiring seasoned advisers. He turned in credible performances in debates on the economy and foreign policy. Voters have noticed: after polling a clear third in August, the Liberals have surged to a near-tie. They now get 31% of the vote, between the ruling Conservatives’ 32% and the NDP’s 27%. To break this logjam, Mr Trudeau must persuade voters he is more than political royalty, and convince the 76% who say they want change that the Liberals are best-placed to deliver it. That means wrestling the NDP.

Mr Mulcair has inadvertently helped the Liberals. To fend off caricatures of his party as wild-eyed socialists, he vowed to balance the budget, allowing Mr Trudeau to propose stimulating the economy with borrowed cash. “Running modest deficits for three years when interest rates are low and the debt-to-GDP ratio is healthy [is] exactly what we need to do,” he says. Similarly, after Mr Trudeau said he would not buy pricey American F-35 fighter jets, Mr Mulcair suggested including the F-35 in a competition. That put him on the same side as Mr Harper, whom NDP voters revile.

But the NDP also enjoys a structural edge. As the success of Britain’s Scottish National Party shows, first-past-the-post systems help parties with geographically concentrated voters. And 57% of the NDP’s MPs come from its stronghold in Quebec. The province is a minefield for the Liberals, who were damaged there by an advertising scandal in 2004. And Mr Trudeau’s surname is an albatross in Quebec, which has never forgiven his father for reforming the constitution in 1982 without its assent.

With over two weeks left, there is plenty of time for any of the candidates to deliver a knockout blow. But Mr Trudeau, an amateur boxer, says he will eschew “that one big hit” in favour of “taking your time [and] imposing yourself with jabs”. That may prove wise for a politician long on style and arguably short on substance.