A week spent outside the bubble of the leaders’ tours reveals an electorate more engaged than is normally the case this early in the campaign. Canada may be on to a referendum-style election for the first time since the 1988 free-trade debate.

This time no fundamental policy choice is responsible for bringing the election discussion quickly to the water coolers of the nation.

If the campaign is showing signs of turning into a two-way conversation between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, it is not because of what they each stand for but because a significant number of voters are coming to see the May 2nd vote as a black-or-white choice on the nature of the next Parliament.

For a week now, the Conservative leader has been systematically hammering the theme that this election offers a stark choice between unrest and stability.

To drive his message home, Harper has been blatantly creative with the facts, starting with his own manoeuvres as an opposition leader in a minority Parliament.

He has risked turning the election into a debate on his character, a huge gamble for a figure that has been shown to have a higher-than-average potential to polarize Canadians.

Harper is taking that gamble based on his conviction that against a divided opposition, polarization is an ace up the Conservative sleeve.

It worked for Brian Mulroney in 1988. He won that election because the anti-free-trade majority vote split between the NDP and the Liberals.

It also paid off for Harper at the time of the 2008 parliamentary crisis.

The Conservative leader saved his minority government from a swift post-election death at the hands of the opposition by using the Bloc Québécois’ support for the Liberal-NDP coalition to convince a plurality of voters that the plan was toxic.

In this campaign, Harper’s real trump card is not the imaginary coalition he has taken to raise at every turn. The latter is ultimately just a prop to keep the controversial 2008 episode fresh in voters’ minds. His real asset is voter fatigue with minority rule.

Eight years and three minority Parliaments after Jean Chrétien’s retirement, there is no doubt the experience has left every constituency on its appetite.

The Conservative base is chomping at the bit for more true blue policies.

A significant number of Liberals feel that if their party is going to lose the election, it would be better off with a full four-year term in opposition to prepare a comeback.

NDP and Bloc supporters — who might be expected to feel empowered by their relative positions of influence in the minority Parliament — are worried instead that their parties have only been empowering the Conservatives.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that frustration with minority rule runs even deeper among voters than on Parliament Hill.

Harper’s bet is that the popular resolve to restore predictability on the federal scene will turn out to be stronger than the reluctance to hand him the majority he covets.

He is hoping that ongoing discomfort with his style of leadership will be overcome by greater unease over the prospect of another potentially unpredictable minority Parliament.

So far, Ignatieff has been the main beneficiary of the Conservative strategy. Outside Quebec, Harper’s hard-line rhetoric seems to be helping the Liberals make inroads in NDP territory.

The trend to rally to the Liberals in the face of a greater Conservative peril is familiar to NDP leaders both in Ontario and at the federal level. The combination of a left-leaning Liberal program, uncertainty over Layton’s health prospects and Harper’s fiery language could turn that trend into a tide away from the NDP next month.

On its own, a limited hemorrhage of NDP support to the Liberals would likely still leave the Conservatives home and dry on election day.

But the spectre of the coalition is only as potent as the Liberals are weak. If they should catch up to the Conservatives in the polls, the tables could turn on Harper.

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Combined with a well-run Ignatieff campaign, raising the party into government territory could be a game-changer, especially for the thousands of Liberals who stayed home in the last election.

After one week, the tentative conclusion is that there is still enough fluidity out there to turn this election into a cliff-hanger.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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