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Almost overnight, it seems, the storyline for Ontario’s election campaign underwent a complete rewrite.

As the NDP clambered into second place in recent polls, the Liberals and Conservatives suddenly took aim at an opponent they had virtually ignored just a few days earlier, and pundits trumpeted a whole new race. The plot turn continued Monday, sprinkled with talk of a potential Liberal-NDP coalition.

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But the pollsters behind those changing surveys say the New Democrats’ recent surge is more of a tremor at this point than a major tectonic shift, and the party would need to take another dramatic leap upward to actually contend for power.

In the meantime, a neck-and-neck race between the NDP and Liberals plays into the front-running Tories’ hands, splitting the left-leaning vote and assuring them a robust majority.

“Although the New Democrats have had a good first part of the campaign, I don’t think it’s a lock that they will be the key challenger (of the PCs),” said Nik Nanos of Nanos Research. “Not yet.”