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In the middle of the 2011 election campaign, Jack Layton gave a remarkable interview to Peter Mansbridge.

Layton’s campaign had looked shaky at the start, with much of the media coverage focused on his recent bout with prostate cancer (which is probably what came back to kill him just a few months later). He recovered his buoyancy as the campaign progressed, waving his cane defiantly in the air before growing and appreciative crowds. But the party barely moved in the polls and seemed stuck below its traditional ceiling of 20 per cent of the vote.

Riding with Layton in the back of a campaign van in P.E.I., Mansbridge asked him whether the NDP would ever break through.

“I think we are laying the groundwork for it. You never really know in politics when that’s going to happen. You can’t actually predict it. And if you do, you’re getting a little too cocky.”

Two days after that interview aired, a CROP poll reported that the party’s support in Quebec was suddenly soaring. Twelve days later, Layton’s party would sweep Quebec with 59 seats — and vault from fourth place in the House of Commons to form the official opposition with 103 seats.

In some ways, Layton’s almost unbelievable success in Quebec understated the scale of his party’s progress nationally. Nearly two-thirds of the votes the party won were outside Quebec, the NDP ran second in every province in English Canada except P.E.I. and it ran first or second in 224 seats across the country.

For Thomas Mulcair, that legacy is a source of both hope and improbable expectations. After his election as leader in 2012, the NDP briefly ascended into first place in the polls for the first time in decades, but then slumped back again. When Justin Trudeau was elected Liberal leader a year later, the NDP resumed its accustomed third place in the polls.

So no one would look at the evidence today and say the NDP is likely to win the next election. The question is whether it’s possible — or whether the party ought to concentrate on “saving the furniture’, as they say in Quebec, by hanging on to as many of the seats it won in 2011 as it can.

The answer, I think, is that Mulcair and the NDP do still have a chance of winning.

A hockey analogy occurs to me as a fan of two teams struggling valiantly to make the playoffs right now with just a handful of games left — the Winnipeg Jets and the Ottawa Senators. The NDP’s fortunes are not completely in its own hands. To succeed, it needs a combination of its own wins and losses by rivals.

Let’s look first at two potential wins.

What the NDP desperately needs is for doubts about Trudeau’s character, consistency and depth to grow. If the public’s uneasiness about Trudeau can be exploited in an election debate, all the better. What the NDP desperately needs is for doubts about Trudeau’s character, consistency and depth to grow. If the public’s uneasiness about Trudeau can be exploited in an election debate, all the better.

In some ways, Mulcair’s crusty personality has led to unfavourable comparisons with Layton’s ebullient charm. But in one big way, Mulcair is a different and better candidate than Layton. No one has trouble imagining Mulcair as prime minister.

Mulcair has been a government minister in Quebec. In the House of Commons he projects strength, wit, intelligence and resilience. He is very much the grown-up some people wonder whether Trudeau even aspires to be. You may not want to have a beer with the man, but he looks and acts like a leader.

And it shows in the polls. Mulcair’s party may be trailing, but when Canadians are asked, for example, whether he has the qualities to be a good leader, he pretty much level-pegs with Harper and Trudeau.

A second strength is policy. Trudeau’s strategy seems to be to create policies vague enough to allow voters both on the left and the right who have tired of Harper to imagine that the Liberals’ views are similar to their own.

On everything from security to the environment and the economy, Mulcair is making himself clear — and clearly on the centre-left — all the better to expose Trudeau’s lack of definition.

The government’s security bill, C-51, is a perfect example. Trudeau doesn’t like it, he says, but will vote for it anyway to prevent the Conservatives from making “political hay”. If elected, Trudeau will change the legislation in ways not entirely specified.

Mulcair is against C-51. Full stop.

Will Mulcair’s clarity trump Trudeau’s fuzziness? Too soon to say. While the polls make it plain that most Canadians are tired of Harper, it is less certain that they are tired of his policies, particularly on the economy and more lately, security. Trudeau is better situated to exploit that ambiguity.

At about 22 per cent in the polls lately, Mulcair’s NDP is significantly stronger than Jack Layton’s was in the run-up to 2011. Still, if a voter wants to vote for anyone-but-Harper, the Liberals — who are essentially tied with the Conservatives in the low 30-per cent range — seem the better bet right now.

There are three great honeypots of swing voters in Canada — Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia — and the NDP currently has the advantage only in Quebec. In that province, where the party’s little-known candidates from 2011 have now sunk roots after four years as MPs, the NDP is the obvious choice for any voter who wants to get rid of Harper.

In Ontario, however, the Liberals have the edge, by tradition and in the polls.

In British Columbia, it’s less clear. The Liberals have a lead over the NDP at the moment, but Liberal strength between campaigns often dissolves in B.C. once the campaign begins.

What the NDP desperately needs is for doubts about Trudeau’s character, consistency and depth to grow. If the public’s uneasiness about Trudeau can be exploited in an election debate, all the better. If he falters, Mulcair and the NDP will be there.

The NDP probably can’t create the conditions necessary for a victory all on its own. All it can do, as Layton said four years ago, is lay the groundwork and be ready when those conditions arrive.

Paul Adams is associate professor of journalism at Carleton and has taught political science at the University of Manitoba. He is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. His book Power Trap explores the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties.

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

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