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This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow: from the perspective of current seat counts, Mulcair is no better positioned to oust Harper than Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is. That’s simply because when the election was called back in August, the NDP’s historic 103-seat count reset back to zero, which is roughly zero seats more — or less — than the Liberals, which is equal to the zero seats currently enjoyed by the Conservatives. So no, the NDP does not need “just 35” more seats to defeat Stephen Harper, any more than the Conservatives need “just zero” more seats to maintain its majority government. What the NDP actually requires is a little direction and consistency, plus at least 100 more seats than it is currently asking for, before it can credibly speak about defeating Harper.

The assumption inherent in the NDP’s plea for just a “touch” more support is that it will actually hang onto the record number of seats it won in 2011, which seems overwhelming unlikely, especially considering its eroding support in Quebec. But with less than a week to go and opposition eyes squaring in on the anyone-but-Harper voters, the NDP is obviously keen to present itself as the party best poised to overtake the Conservatives.

Positioning Mulcair as the worthiest broker of change is good strategy; assuming voters are but unthinking plebs — and worse yet, making that assumption so transparently obvious — to make that case is not. That’s not to say Mulcair is alone in pandering to collective reflexes: indeed, Trudeau has and continues to employ the rhetoric of class warfare to decry the Conservatives’ sensible policies on income splitting and raising the caps on tax-free savings accounts, for example. And Harper’s crusade against the niqab is essentially nothing but an appeal to our emotional instincts. But Mulcair’s distortion is offensive in its own right because it is so unequivocally wrong — undermined by basic arithmetic and purported to be about the facts, when the facts tell a different story. Do they really think Canadians are that stupid?