Every election is different and first-past-the-post systems are notoriously difficult to predict. But having said that, unless something dramatic changes over the remaining four weeks of this federal election campaign, many Conservative candidates battling for re-election in Ontario will not win their seats back. One can almost certainly identify seven of them today.

I’ve gone back to the 2011 election results and found seven cases where Conservative candidates won their riding by fewer than 1,500 votes. With the Conservative vote nationwide now down roughly eight points compared to 2011, the NDP vote about the same, and the Liberal vote up about 11 points, we can come to some pretty certain conclusions as to who’s in deep trouble.

At the top of the list would be the CPC candidates who won by fewer than 100 votes. That’s Jay Aspin in Nipissing-Timiskaming, who won by just 18 votes, and Ted Opitz who took Etobicoke Centre by just 26 votes. Re-election for them would be virtually impossible unless the party’s overall fortunes improve.

Same for John Carmichael in Don Valley West (margin of victory of 611 votes), Wladyslaw Lizon in Mississauga East-Cooksville (676 votes), Joe Daniel in Don Valley East (870 votes), Chungsen Leung in Willowdale (932 votes), and Roxanne James in Scarborough Centre (1,470 votes).

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Having won only 53.9 percent of the seats in the last Parliament, it’s hard to see how Harper wins another majority, given that he would certainly lose marginal seats such as the ones above across the country.

However…

With 30 more seats in the next House of Commons, and the Conservatives showing strength in the areas where those new seats have been created, it’s possible that Harper could capture those new seats to make up for the marginal ones he’ll certainly lose.

Furthermore, the boundaries have changed on many seats and it’s unclear how that would affect the vote.

This campaign is unprecedented. Canadians have never seen all three major parties so tightly bunched together in popular support. Nik Nanos’ daily tracking poll has the Conservatives at 31 per cent, the Liberals at 30 and NDP at 29 per cent – statistically, a 3-way tie.

So, since the Liberals won a majority government in 1997 with 38.5 per cent of the total vote, and with the Conservatives thought to have the most efficient vote of the three major parties, is it beyond the realm of possibility that they could win a majority again this time with a number that’s smaller than that?

No it isn’t.