More from L. Ian MacDonald available More fromavailable here

A piece of advice for those of you poring over the polls in this election year: Ignore the national numbers, except as general trend lines. This story is going to play out in the regional breakouts — notably in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.

And something weird is going on in Quebec right now. The Conservatives are competitive there again, for reasons that no one can quite explain.

In the latest EKOS poll for iPolitics, the Liberals lead in Quebec at 29 per cent, with the NDP at 24 per cent and the Conservatives at 23 per cent — tied for second within the margin of error. The Bloc’s support, at 18 per cent, is generally regarded as a parked vote.

EKOS was in the field from February 4-10, with 2,500 respondents in its sample. Nationally, EKOS puts the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives, 34 to 32 per cent, with the NDP at 19 per cent and the Greens at 8.5 per cent.

If the Conservatives are really running in the mid-20s in Quebec, that would be a highly efficient vote in the 418 region of Quebec City, as well as the South Shore west and east of the provincial capital. That would translate into somewhere between 10 and 15 seats. It’s quite clear from reading the sub-regional numbers provided by EKOS: In Quebec City, the Conservatives are polling at 49 per cent, leading both the NDP and the Liberals by a margin of about 3-1. South of Quebec City, the Conservatives are at 35 per cent, seven points ahead of the NDP.

By way of comparison, the Harper Conservatives won 10 Quebec seats in 2006 with 20 per cent of the vote, and 10 seats again in 2008 with 21 per cent of the vote. But in 2011, with 16.5 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives were reduced to a rump of only five Quebec seats.

Only last July, EKOS had the Conservatives at just 12 per cent in Quebec. With numbers like that in an election, they would have been reduced to Max Bernier and a player to be named later.

As recently as mid-October, EKOS polled the Conservatives at just 14 per cent in Quebec. That October poll was taken just after the parliamentary debate on the mission against Islamic State in northern Iraq, which might have accounted for the first Conservative uptick. The following week saw the murder of two Canadian soldiers in uniform at St. Jean-sur-le-Richelieu and the National War Memorial in Ottawa, followed by a lone gunman’s storming of Centre Block on Parliament Hill.

The shootings made national security a top-of-mind issue in Quebec, where it has remained ever since. The Charlie Hebdo massacre and the killings in a Jewish grocery in Paris last month received massive coverage in Quebec. The burning alive of a Jordanian pilot, and now the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya, have kept the ISIS barbarians in the news cycle.

EKOS President Frank Graves describes Harper’s niqab comments as ‘an uneasy blend of secularism and xenophobia. He’s clearly playing that card.’ Maybe so. But it’s working for Harper — at least for now, in Quebec.

And Stephen Harper hasn’t done a thing to talk down anxiety levels, either in Quebec or the rest of Canada. “The international jihadist movement has declared war,” he said after the Paris terror attacks.

Last week in Victoriaville, Harper played to the gallery, saying the government would appeal a federal court ruling that said a Toronto-area Muslim woman could remain veiled in her niqab and not show her face at a citizenship ceremony.

“I think most Canadians believe that it is offensive,” he declared, “that someone would hide their identity at the very moment they are joining the Canadian family.” Really?

When he said this in French, he received strong applause from the crowd arranged around him.

Harper was speaking in the secularist heartland of Quebec, where many have never even seen a woman in a veil — which, of course, doesn’t prevent them from having opinions about Muslims wearing clothing for religious reasons. This sentiment first erupted in Quebec politics in the “reasonable accommodation” debate of the 2007 Quebec election, forerunner to the wretched “charter of secular values” proposed by the Parti Quebecois in 2014.

EKOS President Frank Graves describes Harper’s niqab comments as “an uneasy blend of secularism and xenophobia. He’s clearly playing that card.”

“His lines,” Graves added, “go beyond where the public is, and he’s overplaying his hand,” particularly in the rest of Canada.

Maybe so. But it’s working for Harper — at least for now, in Quebec.

In a year-end poll by Ipsos-Reid, 73 per cent of Quebecers supported the deployment against ISIS — exactly the same as the level of national support. This is a startling number from Quebec, historically the most pacifist province in the country, home of the anti-conscription movement in two world wars. Again, in a Leger poll last week, 72 per cent of Quebecers supported the government’s new anti-terror legislation, Bill C-51 — even though the bill could end up compromising civil liberties, as happened during under the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970.

When these attitudinal numbers are taken into account, the Conservative bounce in Quebec begins to make more sense.

The Conservative revival in Quebec City and south also explains Harper’s Quebec tour in the last week. From Victoriaville on Thursday, he campaigned in Quebec City on Friday, did a photo-op with Bonhomme Carnaval on the weekend, and did a talk-radio interview that aired Monday in which he said Radio-Canada had “a lot” of employees who “hate” conservative values. Of course, knocking Rad-Can is a time-honoured tradition for prime ministers, dating from Pierre Trudeau once threatening to “put the key in the door” and lock the place up.

And in a city where the top local ask is a $100 million paint-job for the iconic Quebec Bridge — owned by CN but also a Canadian National Historic Site — Harper even signed a Valentine for the bridge, promising $75 million from the feds. According to Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume, Harper wrote: “The bridge needs love, but above all it needs paint.”

Welcome to 418. You’ll be seeing a lot of Harper there.

L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy, the bi-monthly magazine of Canadian politics and public policy. He is the author of five books. He served as chief speechwriter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1985-88, and later as head of the public affairs division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992-94. The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.